About two decades ago, Tammy Oswalt made the difficult decision to place her only son for adoption. On the brink of homelessness and already raising daughters, she felt that her son would have a better chance with a different family.
She always wondered about her baby boy, and she never knew if she would ever seen him.
Tammy’s daughter, Sammy, clearly loves her mom. She is always ready to surprise Tammy with thoughtful, unexpected gifts on her birthday. Last year it was AC/DC tickets.
In the video below, Sammy is recording her mom before she receives a bigger surprise. She tells Tammy this present is something money can’t buy.
“As soon as she said about it being something that ‘money can’t buy,’ something in my heart knew what was about to happen, and I was so afraid to turn around,” she told Caters News. “The moment I looked back and saw him, so much ran through me. There was so much love, I just wanted to hold and kiss him.”
After Tammy arranged for her son, Dylan, to be adopted, she got only a few updates from the agency. She requested to know more a few times but was shut down. After that, she removed herself from the situation, feeling that was best.
“Finally, the peace I have craved for in my heart was now right in front of me. I felt whole for the very first time, since I last held Dylan in my arms,” she said.
“He deserved a family with two loving parents, a stable home and everything else I couldn’t provide at the time,” Tammy says. “Since Dylan’s birth, I had essentially hated myself. It tore me up daily — wondering where he was, how he was, and if he hated me.”
What Tammy didn’t know was that late last year, Dylan tracked down Sammy himself. He wanted to know their mom as much as Mom desperately wanted to know him. One day, Tammy got a message in her inbox from Dylan that said, “How are you, Mom?”
“The first time I saw that he’d called me Mom, all my fears just dissipated. I couldn’t believe it. I was so overwhelmed that I just burst into tears,” she remembers.
Then, Dylan and Sammy decided to surprise Tammy in person for her birthday.
“Seeing how happy and emotional my biological mom was when she saw me just felt incredible. I feel more complete now in a sense. No longer is there a whole side to my life that I wonder or don’t know about,” he said.
You can see the video of their first meeting below.
