The short, tragic and ultimately triumphant life of Michael C. ended this past weekend. I had been Michael's volunteer guardian for the last ten years. Clifford and his lovely wife Resi had been Michael's foster parents for the last nine years and they were truly angels here on earth and the real heroes in this story. They are living proof that unconditional love truly does conquer all.

When I met Mike his situation was pretty dire. Michael was in a wheel chair as a result of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, a genetic disease that causes muscular tissue to waste away and also affects the heart and lungs and is usually fatal by age 21. Duchenne's muscular dystrophy is one of many life threatening ailments like Parkinson's disease that researchers hope can be helped if not cured by stem cell research. Mike's muscles had been weakened to the point in the last few years that he couldn't feed himself or type on the computer. In the later stages of the disease process, breathing also becomes difficult.

Michael was one of five siblings of an alcoholic father and a mentally disabled mother. The first half of his life was a nightmare. One of my first functions as a guardian ad litem had been to terminate parental rights. One of the siblings was in a juvenile detention facility, Mike and two of the younger sisters were in foster care, and an older sister was a runaway. At the time I visited Michael he was doing well, a week later he had been transferred out of that home and into a foster home in another county for disruptive behavior. Mike suffered from abandonment issues, which caused him to disrupt his placements. Once he began to bond with his foster parents he would act up repeatedly until they basically had enough and threw him out. He did things like throw feces and refused to put clothes on, he was quite a character. When Clifford stepped into the picture, Mike was at the end of a long road, the only placements available to him were group homes for the disabled or intensive foster care. He was literally melting down. The two middle sisters were placed in an adoptive home and Mike wound up with Clifford and Resi where he found his own little piece of heaven.

Clifford and his wife hail from Germany and they have to be two of the most loving, accepting, people I've ever met in my life. From the moment they met Michael they accepted him as their son and that was that. He of course began to act up in short order but Clifford announced that he was home to stay and he needed to shape up and obey the rules because he had nowhere else to go. In no time at all Mike was transformed and he became part of their family. Several months later, I met them at DSS to place Mike into permanent foster care and asked if there was anything I could do to help and Mike mentioned that he liked Britney Spears, at the time I had a little pull at the Bi-Lo Center and when Britney came to Greenville on tour I managed to get Mike backstage to meet his dream date. I'm so damn glad I managed to do that for him. That's about the best $100 I ever spent in my life.

The best thing about Clifford was he always encouraged Mike's dreams. One of the biggest fights we ever had with the Department of Social Services was when the case worker insisted that Clifford and Resi begin planning for Mike's death. Clifford dismissed talk of Mike's demise (wisely so since he was years away from the end of his life as it turned out) and insisted that plans be made for college and the rest of his life instead. Mike wanted to go to college and he wanted to fall in love and Clifford always pushed him forward. Mike went to several of his high school proms and even took part in a class trip to Washington D.C. Clifford made sure that his life was as normal as possible. He then he embarked on a series of internet romances proving that there really is someone out there in cyber space for everyone! I think the hope that he would find his true love helped sustain Michael.

Mike managed to graduate from high school and was getting ready to enroll in college when he contracted pneumonia and died at the age of 23. His long physical struggle was over. He beat the odds and managed to live a very full life. I cried in church on Sunday thinking about Mike's long arduous struggle, his rough beginning and the fact that I know without a doubt he's in heaven because he's already lived in hell.

I feel blessed to have played some small part in the story of Mike's life. I feel that everyone we meet in our lives touches us, changes us and teaches us something. Michael taught me grace and strength, Clifford and Resi showed me the power of unconditional love and acceptance and I will be forever inspired by their example.