After my only parent, my father, crashed his car, my uncle started fighting for my adoption. I was five and a half, I don’t remember those times very well, but it’s still fresh in my mind to hear the news and to be taken to an orphanage. I spent about two years there while my uncle took care of things in court and was able to adopt me. For that, he rather signed my foster mom and worked his ass off.
He had health problems even then, and by the time he was thirty-five, the lupus he suffered from severely damaged his kidneys and required an urgent transplant. The search for a donor could not be postponed and the attending physician suggested that I be his donor. Of course, I agreed. How could I do otherwise?
Thanks to him, I had a caring and loving family, lived in a beautiful house, went to university, and could call someone “Papa. I didn’t tell my uncle until the last minute that I was going to be his donor, because I was worried that he would start talking me out of it. Luckily, it wasn’t so much his decision as it was mine, so his excuses didn’t work anyway, even when he found out and the doctors performed the surgery. It was painful, scary, unpleasant, but it pales in comparison to the fact that my other dad was on the mend.
Some would say that’s enough to thank a man for adopting and supporting a child, but I plan to do as much as I can for my family in the future.
