My name is Mandy Adamson, and I’m no stranger to loss. Over the past handful of years, I’ve lost both of my grandmothers, my uncle, a family friend, my partner, and very recently, my own father who struggled for 6 years with cancer.

My father was an incredible man — funny, caring, and extremely handy. He was my mother’s perfect soulmate for the past 35 years. There’s a plethora of stories I can tell about times we rescued turtles from highways and baby squirrels that fell from their nests to times when my friends’ cars broke down and needed fixing. And who could forget all the great food my father could cook!

So much of who I am today is because of my father and the woman he helped raise me to be, and in many aspects, I’m just like my father. He knew what to do in a crisis and never just stood still, not until old age and bad health caught up to him. He was a real superhero.

How many people do you know can get hit by a drunk driver while driving a motorcycle to work, be pronounced DOA, and like a miracle, wake up in the morgue?

Losing my father as quickly as we did was an extremely devastating blow and a wound I know will never truly heal for my mother and me, and to add insult to injury, two days after my father left us, our home was put up for foreclosure and sold at auction. We’ve been given until the end of August to leave.

Now that my father has passed, my mother is now determined more than ever to come home from a transitional care facility where she has spent the last 3 years recovering from a major stroke. She’s not mentally disabled, but she’s physically disabled. Now that there’s no home for her to come home to, it’s up to me to find a suitable living space for us.

Just recently, I applied for an apartment within the same complex as one of my closest friends. In fact, she would be upstairs from us. It couldn’t be more of a dream come true, but in order to get started, we’re going to need some help while we wait on life insurance and settlement money. This will take months…

What I’m asking for is about three months' worth of rent and the pet deposit fee for our 12-year-old beagle who’s always going to wonder why my father didn’t come home. Our final goal is $4,500.

We weren’t there when he passed because he declined so quickly that hospice took over and told us that my father did not want us to know anything about his condition. I guess that was his way of trying to shield us from the awful truth that he was dying. At the very least, I had come to see him the night before after a long shift at work and managed to give him my last hug and “I love you” before he passed.

We appreciate any and all help at this time, and if anyone happens to be local and could help us procure boxes, shipping tape, bubble wrap, and packing paper for some of our more fragile items, we would be very grateful.