It didn’t hit Ryan Nealon that his mom had died until two years after it happened. Only 5 years old at the time, he remembers the day in bits and pieces. He was being babysat by his mom Terri’s friend when everything seemed fine — until his Aunt Peggy, who was on vacation in the desert, got a call.
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00:0025 years ago, you adopted me. I wrote this song for you.
00:08When I was five, I lost my mom to a drunk driving accident. She was killed in Vegas
00:15on the morning of New Year's Day, and it was 2000. So the minute that it happened,
00:26you know, my aunt got a call from my cousin. And, you know, at the time, she was on vacation
00:35at the desert and was not expecting to get that call. And, you know,
00:40her and my uncle kind of dropped everything. And they went and picked me up. And the rest was kind
00:47of history. It wasn't that like my aunt ever wanted me to forget about my mom. It was like,
00:53for me, I always had two moms. It was very special because like,
00:57my aunt never tried to replace her, but always tried to be like an addition.
01:02I know for me, at least, like, I always felt like I never got the chance to say thank you to my mom
01:08for taking me in when, you know, I lost my birth mom. It was really a difficult time for her.
01:12I'll never understand like, you know, how someone could go and testify to a court,
01:20literally in front of the person who killed her sister, and then at the same time, take in
01:27her son and raise him completely without any support, without anyone holding her hand. Like,
01:34she did it all by herself. And I don't think that, you know, there's a lot of adoptive parents out
01:39there that do not get the flowers that they deserve. And I just hope that this song just
01:44gives that to them in some sort of way, like normalizing the thing, like, you can cry now,
01:49like, you know, I like, I don't need you to be like the strongest person in the world. Like,
01:53you already are that to me, like, and, you know, I'm just, I'm here for you.
01:57So that was kind of the whole point of that song.