What’s the biggest obstacle you’ve faced? Were you forced to deal with it? What about the biggest thing you’ve overcome? Many people face unimaginable obstacles in their life, others, well maybe it’s something like breaking their arm or losing the final baseball game of the season. I would say that my biggest obstacle that I’ve overcame would be the death of my brother in 2011.
Adam had Cystic Fibrosis which is a terminal illness that basically means your lungs don’t function properly and you have a lot of breathing problems. My mother and her husband at the time adopted Adam from an orphanage in Guatemala when he was 8 years old. They had told her husband that if they did not adopt him soon, he would die. Her husband, Bert, failed to tell my mom this. Instead of telling her, he was very persistent to adopt him and soon he was on his way home with them. My mother had already adopted 6 other kids 4 of the 6 from Guatemala, adam was the 7th child. They took him to the doctors and soon my mother got a call and was flabbergasted when she heard the words, “Your son has Cystic Fibrosis,” The next 20+ years were spent traveling back and forth to hospitals like RMH and even St. Judes. My family was told that adam would not live to be 16 years old. Little did they know that he was not going to give up that easily.
Adam started going to school and was loved by everyone. He was the type of guy that you Couldn’t even find a reason to dislike him even if you wanted to. He played football in High School as much as he could and was nice to everyone no matter what. Sadly, Adam had to drop out of school early due to constant hospital visits that would sometimes last for weeks on end. He was devastated because he loved school and it bothered him that he never got to finish high school. Instead, he tutored elementary schoolers because he enjoyed children and the learning environment so much. He never got his drivers license or had kids but he was still a very happy person.
In 2004, i was adopted, and right away, Adam and i had a really close connection and we stayed very close throughout the time he was with us. Adam, who i called Bubby, and i would spend all of our time together usually playing games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Double Dragon, Super Mario, or Paper Mario on his Nintendo 64 or PS3. I would always visit him in the hospital and await his homecoming eagerly along with his dog, bandit, who loved him more than anything. Even if he was in the hospital, bubby would still try and make people smile especially on halloween which was his favorite holiday. Eventually, we got him on the lung transplant waiting list. Cystic Fibrosis, which is know to be a terminal disease, could be cured for my brother. We waited about a year when we got a call at about 10 p.m. that he was moved to #1 on the waiting list and needs to be air vacced to Chicago immediately where they will perform the surgery. We scrambled to get him to the hospital and he was off. We packed as fast as we could and bought things to eat for the long drive up there. It was becoming reality.
By the time we got to the hospital, we were told that his surgery went well and when we went to see him he was sitting up in his chair eating his favorite, biscuits and gravy. They called him the poster child for lung transplants because he was doing so well. He hoped he could start coaching football and get his drivers license and just do everything thats he’s wanted to do all his life.He did great for months and months until one day he couldn’t breathe and he called me into his room and he could barely talk. When we took him to the emergency room, they immediately air vacced him to Chicago. He was there for over a month and when we got up there, he was on life support and he had had an aneurysm, and if he did live, he would never be able to talk again. My mother decided that he no longer needed to suffer and asked them to pull everything. We came in to say our last goodbyes and that we loved him. He, as well as he could, said, “Sugar,” which is what he always called me. We also heard him clearly say, “home,” which at the time we thought meant our home back in Olney, but later it was clear that he meant heaven. He was a die hard christian and was very involved in the church.
Adam died on July, 18th 2011 at the age of 32. I guess, in the end, you never really get over a death like that completely. You learn how to cope with it and find closure and clarity knowing that they are no longer suffering and that it would have been cruel of you to keep them alive in the state that they were in. That is still my biggest obstacle and i feel like it will be for a long time if not forever. But, like Helen Keller said, “So long as my memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, i shall say that life is good.” And i know he will always be with me.