Last year, Chevrolet ran an ad that was nothing short of tear-jerking from start to finish. That ad, “Holiday Ride,” was about a man who remembered his late wife through his last connection with her – an old Chevy convertible that he had stored away. The man’s daughter, seeing his pain, asks some folks in town to help her fix the car up and she presents it as a gift to her dad saying, through tears, “It’s what Mom would have wanted.”

Well, the automotive company is back with another ad just in time for the holiday season, and it’s just as much a cinematic masterpiece as it is a stellar ad.

This year’s ad, “Mrs. Hayes,” tells the story of a woman who lost her husband in war decades ago, but has found herself a new family in the neighborhood she has settled down in – particularly her friendship with a young boy named Billy. As Billy grows up, she is active in his life and the lives of every kid in the neighborhood.

It opens with Mrs. Hayes struggling to get her car – the car she and her husband owned together – started. She flashed back to her dropping him off at a recruitment office, fast-forwarding to her taking his personal items home. It is pretty clear early on that she has lost him and she moves into a home that, we can assume, was the home they were going to live in forever.

But Billy accidentally hits a baseball right at the car. She befriends him and it begins a lifelong friendship. In the longer version of the ad, as well as the shorter, made-for-TV version, we see Billy helping her out with the car, with her house, etc. We also see Billy’s wife come to Mrs. Hayes when she is going into labor, and Mrs. Hayes grabs her keys to take her to the car.

Eventually, we get back to the opening scene, and who is there? A grown Billy, who takes Mrs. Hayes and her groceries home in his car (a Chevrolet vehicle, naturally). He then goes back, unknown to her, and gets the car fixed, surprising her with it the next morning.

The ad hits so many positive notes. While not as sad as last year’s, it offers a powerful message on family, love, and community. Which, to be completely fair, is a message we desperately need right now.

With the holiday season beginning, there are so many of us without loved ones or still apart from those we care about most. For whatever reason, many people around the world are isolated from the people that matter most to them. But rather than withdraw, it’s always so important to keep going out into the world and to be a positive impact on others’ lives, because it fills that empty place inside left by those we’ve lost.

So, thanks Chevy, for once again creating a powerful ad that hits all the right notes. It’s the kind of thing we need right now.