Dream reunion for dying mum
A TERMINALLY ill Kiwi mum’s last wish to meet her birth family has become ‘‘a dream come true’’.
Amy Slevin was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and by April – three days before her 43rd birthday – she was told her cancer was terminal.
‘‘Because I’m ill – I’m terminally ill – it’s the last dream I wanted to fulfil for myself, and that was to bring all the family together, to have lots of fun together, and to bring the other family, combined together as one,’’ Slevin said.
The Wellingtonian was born in the UK and adopted with her twin brother Jack as a baby. They managed to contact their birthfather a couple of years ago, which also led to the discovery of a half-brother she had never met.
And with thanks to kindhearted donors, her half-brother was able to visit from England in time for a big get-together with friends and family – including a sister from London she had not seen in more than a decade – at Ohariu Farm just north of Wellington City yesterday.
Slevin described it as ‘‘a dream come true’’.
‘‘I’m just so blessed. Because my birth-father was the one I set out to find. And he doesn’t really want to know me or my twin, but he opened up this... these other siblings that I’ve got. And it’s just enriched my life.’’
Slevin has spent the past week with her half-brother Simon Turner as well as her sister Melanie Mcvey.
‘‘Yes there’s been big surprises. We’re all quite similar. It’s that nurture versus nature everyone talks about.’’
And now Slevin’s teenage daughter, Aroha, will have the chance to know more of her family.
Turner said meeting his halfsister in Wellington for the first time was ‘‘overwhelming’’.
‘‘This is the blessing of what’s come out of it.