After I told my husband about his situation, he was like, "Well, we have to bring him home." There was never any hesitation because they clearly had that special bond, so in 2018, we brought Francis home. Francis is more independent; he has a rare disorder called WAGR syndrome and is autistic, but he walks and talks.
When the boys were reunited, they definitely recognized each other, but it was a funny story. Nolan's name in the orphanage was Tony. On the first morning, Francis came downstairs and looked at me and looked at Nolan and went, "Tony, bye, bye." He was not ready to share his new family with this little brother. They were so funny together. Even though Nolan couldn't talk, he expressed himself with his facial expressions and different movements and actions. They had that brotherly rivalry, and it was so cute.
But financially, because we did two adoptions back-to-back, it was very, very, very hard on us. We are not wealthy, just regular people.
Growing the family one last time
Gift of Adoption, which provides financial assistance to families who adopt, gave us the largest of the grants we received with Francis' adoption. Those grants allowed us to bring him home. During that process, we were contacted by Lifeline Children's Services Hong Kong about this little girl who was very much like Nolan. They needed assistance on how to advocate for her and how to write her file. We started helping them advocate for this little girl, and everyone was getting the kickback: "No, she's too severe."
That's when I found my passion: advocating for these kids who have so much worth and bring so much joy and value to our family and getting everyone on board to see that, whether that's doctors or school administrators.
About a year later, we were told that the government was going to move Oaklynn, the little girl, to an adult institution. She was 4 years old, but they saw her as unadoptable.
I looked at Troy, and he was like: "Absolutely not. We cannot afford to do back-to-back."
I finally got him to agree, but his conditions were that we could not spend one penny.
Gift of Adoption helped again. We brought her home in November 2021, in what was a hard year.
Nolan had been diagnosed with a seizure disorder called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. It's a very rare and progressive seizure disorder. It eventually takes over you. He died in May 2021. We were all holding him.
The brothers and sisters left behind
With Francis, it's still hard because he misses Nolan, and because of his cognitive delays, it's even harder for him to process and for us to explain.
Francis' special-education teacher in elementary school wrote him a social story to help him process the different stages of grief. It's a book about knowing and losing his brother and his best friend.
He carries this book around every single day, and sometimes we know that he's really missing Nolan because he'll just, out of nowhere, start reciting the book.