My step-father married my mother when I was 5 years old. My real father has never been on the picture. My stepfather has always been there. He has always wanted to adopted me but when I was little I didn’t want to do it with fear of having to change my last name. Now 37 years later I was ready to present him adoption papers. Only thing is 3 months after looking into making it official my stepfather was diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer that has spread all over his body. Something we didn’t see coming. It has been a hard hit so now more than ever I wanted to make it official, and bring back his offer. I presented adoption papers during our family Easter gathering. I put the papers in a big golden egg, which I had found out when he was a child he had an aunt that would hide a special gold egg for him with money and tell him where it was hidden. A paper is a paper a fathers love is forever. It just makes things more emotional not knowing how much time left we have.