I became my sister-in-law’s legal guardian. No, I wasn’t expecting it either

It was another stop on unexpected journey that began years earlier with call from my wife’s stepmother

They’d approach me one after another as we wandered the halls of New York’s family court, awaiting our case. There was the muscly guy with the neck tattoo. An inked snake slithered from his chest, as if to escape from the confines of his T-shirt, where it battled with his pecs for space. Or the teenage tough guy, his cap pulled down to conceal those teary eyes. Each with the same question: “Sir, are you a lawyer?”

I’m no lawyer. But I was wearing a suit.

I was at a hearing for our application to provide legal guardianship for my teenage sister-in-law, in an effort not to have “state care” be a part of our lives. It was another stop on an unexpected journey that had begun years earlier with a phone call from Tess, my wife Mei’s stepmother. She’d asked that were anything to happen to her or her husband, Bob (Mei’s dad), would we take care of their youngest daughter, Angela, who was then just 11. I said yes, of course. It was not as if anything was going to happen, was it?

Except, sometimes, things do happen.

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Angela was the youngest of Mei’s blended family. I’d met her just a few times, on family trips to California. She was a bright, funny, happy kid. Their dad, Bob Finnerty, was a United States Marine Corps veteran. He’d signed up to serve his country as an idealistic teenager, straight out of high school, as the war in Vietnam was raging.

In the years I’d known him, I’d asked Bob whether his experiences were similar to those in movies I’d seen: young men wading through swamps, rifles aloft, to a soundtrack of Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and Smokey Robinson. He told me all he’d heard was buzzing mosquitoes, persistent rain and AC-47 “dragon ships” humming overhead in the dead of night, as he and other battle-scarred young men counted the days until they’d return home.

He’d seen heavy combat during three tours of duty. Years later we discovered that he was in Ho Chi Minh City (then known as Saigon) when it fell; he helped South Vietnamese civilians to safety from the advancing Viet Cong army. He returned home with citations for bravery and an undiagnosed case of post-traumatic stress disorder, to a United States that had become jaded by the war and oblivious to its warriors.

Struck in the side of his head by a ricocheting enemy bullet, he was awarded a Purple Heart. The ever-humble Bob refused it, as “other guys deserved it more”.

Tess, meanwhile, had fought her own battles, having emerged victorious following a fight with kidney cancer. Sgt Bob was tough; Tess was barely 50. They’d decades left, right? Not quite. Tess’s cancer returned, and she died in February 2014. Bob’s health deteriorated rapidly soon afterwards.

What his years in the Vietnamese jungle didn’t do to him, his beloved wife’s cruel illness and premature death- did. A heartbroken Bob Finnerty died barely 18 months later, leaving behind five devastated daughters. Angela had lost her parents by the age of 14.

In our New York apartment at that time were Mei and I, our sons; five-year-old Liam and three-year-old Emmett, and our daughter, five-month-old Fiona. Fiona’s first time on a plane was to attend the funeral of the grandfather she’d not met. With her on her return to New York, was a new “big sister”, her Aunt Angela.

It was a leap into the unknown for everyone.

Mei had lost her adored dad, and now, with three young kids, and a demanding career as a nurse practitioner in a New York hospital, she was to begin a stressful legal process that would see us become lawful guardians of her teenage sister, whom she barely knew, as they had grown up in different households and separate generations.

From swaying palm trees in her native California, Angela arrived in a snowy New York during a miserably cold January. An unending battle with paperwork ensued. New doctors, dentists, health insurers and schools had to be applied for. Social workers called, to ensure we had a teenager-friendly home.

Angela was to attend a relatively tough school, midway through the year. It was two subway rides away, and she was a new girl whose life had turned upside-down. Not all the other girls were happy that a new girl had joined their ranks. And she faced the challenge of hormonally charged teenage boys, whose interests had piqued with the arrival of this mysterious new girl from the west coast.

Our own kids loved her at once, with Fiona, in particular, imitating her every step.

She came with us to Ireland, meeting my family. She hung out in Howth, and at Castletown House in Celbridge, Co Kildare, where my own mam spent her childhood. She strolled through my dad’s beloved Liberties, in Dublin’s inner city, and had her picture taken with Molly Malone.

We got her an internship working with a respected New York politician. She visited the United Nations building and had her photograph in the New York Times when she dressed up for Bloomsday at Bloom’s Tavern, the celebrated Manhattan hostelry.

Of course, we were not immune to the troubled times that parents (and guardians) of teenagers endure, and there were many sad days. There were frustrating, challenging days, too, but there were fun times in abundance, and even now our own kids remind us of funny things said and done during “the Angela years”.

There were laughs, incredible memories and lots of love. We took her to London, Florida, Liverpool, home to California, and to Arlington National Cemetery, where her parents are interred just metres from the resting spots of John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy, and close to 400,000 of Bob’s brothers (and sisters) in arms.

Angela spent four years with us, as something resembling a childhood returned to her life, and she progressed through her teen years into womanhood. She’s since completed high school and moved on, out and upwards. Married (to a US marine), and with her own baby girl, Angela is a survivor.

I guess we are too, and I’m not even mistaken for a lawyer any more.

Michael Fitzpatrick is a playwright and journalist from Lucan, Co Dublin, who lives in New York with his wife, Mei, a nurse practitioner at a Manhattan hospital, and their three children, Liam, Emmett and Fiona

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