I gave up 22 years of my life raising my triplet nieces — what they did at their college graduation made me drop to my knees.

The girls were six months old when my brother left them on my porch with three car seats, one diaper bag, and a note written on the back of a gas station receipt.

I’m sorry, Elias. I can’t do this.

Their mother had passed eleven days earlier, complications from a rare postpartum infection nobody caught in time. My brother, Curtis, lasted less than two weeks trying to raise three infants alone in Thistledown, Georgia, before he ran out of whatever a person needs to keep going through something like that.