“I didn’t know what to say. How do you tell a dying six-year-old that some people are just selfish and cruel?”
When Lily woke up, she looked at me with those big eyes and asked, “Can you come back tomorrow?”
That was four months ago. The two months the doctors gave Lily came and went. I showed up every single day.
Sometimes we did big things—I’d carry her outside to sit on my parked motorcycle, let her pretend to drive. Sometimes we did small things—watched cartoons, colored pictures, played with her dolls.
And every single day, I told her she was the prettiest, smartest, bravest little girl in the whole world.
My club brothers thought I’d lost my mind at first. Then they met Lily. Soon it wasn’t just me visiting.
Different brothers would come by to say hello, bring presents, sit with her so Jennifer could take a shower or run errands. We became Lily’s extended family. Her uncles, she called them.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation had granted Lily a wish—a trip to meet a princess at a theme park. But Lily turned it down.
“I already got my wish,” she told the coordinator. “I got a daddy and a whole family of uncles. I don’t need anything else.”
Last week, Lily got much worse. The tumor was growing faster. She stopped being able to walk on her own. She slept most of the day.
Yesterday morning, Lily woke up and asked Jennifer to help her get dressed in her favorite blue shirt. Then she asked for me.
When I got there, she was sitting on the couch, clutching her teddy bear, barely able to keep her eyes open. But she smiled when she saw me.
“Hi, Daddy,” she whispered. That’s what she’d been calling me for the last month. Not “pretend daddy” anymore. Just Daddy.
And I’d started calling her my daughter. Because that’s what she was.
“Hi, baby girl.” I sat down next to her carefully, afraid I might hurt her. She was so fragile now, so small.
She leaned against me and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders.
“I made you something,” she said. Jennifer handed her a piece of paper covered in crayon. It was a drawing of a man on a motorcycle with a little girl on the back.
I held that picture and I sobbed. Not quiet tears. Deep, body-shaking sobs.
Lily patted my vest with her tiny hand. “Don’t be sad, Daddy. You made me so happy. I got to know what having a daddy feels like. That’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me too, sweetheart,” I told her, and I meant it with everything in me.
This little girl had changed my entire life in four months. She’d shown me what I’d been missing. She’d made me a father.
Lily fell asleep in my arms. She didn’t wake up again.
She passed away at 3
this morning, with me on one side and Jennifer on the other, both of us holding her hands.
The last thing she said, barely a whisper, was: “Love you, Daddy.”Continue reading…
