I received this email from Rudy Carrasco of Urban Onramps.

Bene, thanks for sharing about my son’s situation on your blog. Would you mind sharing some of your brother’s story with me? This is hard, but I want to know as much as I can about what we’re up against. Rudy

My brother Larry and I never met. I didn’t know I had other brothers and sisters because I was adopted.
As young adults we were contacted by two sisters on my biological mother’s side of the family. It was a shock.
Our’s was a family of secrets, of shame and rigidity; and my kid sister, and my twin and I had been adopted by my biological father’s sister and her husband.
My biological mother died nine days after my fourth birthday. She never married my father, she left her husband and four children and moved in with him. Then we came along. By then, my biological parents had descended into drunkedness and drug abuse and shortly after her death, we were removed from his care and raised without knowledge until we were 18.
When he showed up to meet us he was drunk. Meeting us was part of a contract signed before the adoption.
Then a few years later the letter arrived at Thanksgiving asking to meet with us.
My siblings and I discovered we had three sisters and a brother and a husband that my real mother had left behind to be with my biological father.
The siblings saw an adveristisment in a Salvation Army National newsletter, looking for the children of my father and felt they just had to reach out.
They had been told about us years before, as their dad didn’t believe in keeping secrets.
After my biological mother died, my biological father had continued his habits, met another woman and they had two sons. She wound up leaving him, and another woman moved in while Larry and Shawn’s mom left for the coast to raise her boys on her own.
Larry was her oldest, lively and normal. He began to get lethargic, nausaeated, and ran intermittant fevers. It took a bit of time to diagnosis his illness and he was treated several ways with some remissions. Then the time came when he desperately needed a bone marrow transplant.
In a determined and frantic attempt his brother and mother asked the Salvation Army to try to help find his three half siblings who might be a donor match for Larry. God Bless the Salvation Army. They never hesitated.

It was not to be. I’m angry at secrets to this day. Larry died less than a month before our maternal siblings saw that ad and reached out to the three of us hoping we would find it in our hearts to help him by getting tested and donating if possible.
Larry didn’t have to die. His leukemia was advanced, but there was time. The doctors believed that, his mom and brother knew that, Larry knew that, and the Salvation Army acted on it.
If one of us had been a match, ‘no’ would not have crossed our minds.
We quickly contacted Larry’s brother, shared his loss and our deep regret and grief.
I remember being told what kind of leukemia he had, but my anger and sorrow has blocked out that knowledge from that painful time.
Larry endured a lot of treatment and wanted to live. I’ll always regret that my family secret’s were more sick than he was. I’ll always regret that the acts of love that reached coast to coast to find us didn’t reach him in time. I regret I never had an opportunity to show him my love either.

Rudy, Sam has a great deal going for him. Early diagnosis, excellent medical intervention, improved medical techniques in the treatment of childhood cancers, love, family, caring, the sharing and honesty of others and the watchful eyes of God looking out for your son’s life. It is okay to be afraid, angry, uncertain, and to take time to cry and steal moments to care for yourself. God love you Rudy; I think it is hard knowing, but perhaps even harder not to know. In times of illness, knowledge gives us a sense of control when we have no control.

I’m so sorry that I can’t teach you anything about this kind of cancer except to say there is hope for Sam as there was for Larry. In my brother’s case, time ran out. Sam has been given the gift of time. Love him in it, and through it.
You have a beautiful son.
I’d have liked Larry, his playfulness, streak of rebellion, courage, and tenacious free spirit. Sam is not robbed by secrets. I’m praying for the medical personnel, you and your wife, your unborn child, Sam, the stress you are under. You are in a frightening and lonely season. Go under His mercy.
I sought the LORD , and he answered me;
he delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame. Psalm 34:4-5