“I’m taking her,” he told the social workers. “She’s my niece. I won’t hand her to strangers.”
You have to understand—Ray wasn’t just my guardian. For twenty-two years, he was everything to me.
He learned makeup tutorials on YouTube so I could feel beautiful. He pushed my wheelchair through every fair and festival in town, buying me cotton candy and finding accessible rides. When kids stared, he’d stare right back until they looked away.
“You’re perfect exactly as you are,” he’d say whenever I felt different.
Then he got sick.
At first, it was small things like forgetting his keys or needing to pause on the stairs to catch his breath.
Then came the doctors talking quietly in the hallways, the paperwork, and finally hospice care.
And then, just like that, he was gone.
