It didn’t really hit Ryan Nealon that his mom had died until two years after it happened. Only 5 years old at the time, he remembers the actual day in bits and pieces. He was being babysat by his mom Terri’s friend and 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 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. Her and my uncle kind of dropped everything
00:42and they went and picked me up. And the rest was kind of history. It wasn't that like my
00:49aunt ever wanted me to forget about my mom. It was like for me, I always had two moms. It was
00:55very special because like my aunt never tried to replace her, but always tried to be like an
01:00addition. I know for me, at least, like I always felt like I never got the chance to say thank you
01:07to my mom for taking me in when, you know, I lost my birth mom. It was really a difficult time for
01:12her. I'll never understand like, you know, how someone could go and testify to a court literally
01:21in front of the person who killed her killed her sister and then at the same time take in her son
01:28and raise him completely without any support, without any anyone holding her hand like she did
01:35it all by herself. And I don't think that, you know, there's a lot of adoptive parents out there
01:39that do not get the flowers that they deserve. And I just hope that this song just gives that to
01:44them in some sort of way. Normalizing the thing like you can cry now. Like, you know, I like I
01:50don't need you to be like the strongest person in the world. Like you already are that to me.
01:54Like, you know, I'm just I'm here for you. So that was kind of the whole point of that song.