Jean Manning moved from Florida to Massachusetts with her teenage son Jake to seek better medical care for herself.
The move also meant she needed to find another school for Jake, who has Down syndrome. Luckily, the family of two found a school near their new home in Ayer, Massachusetts that would show them the meaning of family.
Jean and Jake moved to the Northeast from Florida around 2015. Jean, who had terminal breast cancer, was seeking the best treatment. When they finally settled down, Jean looked for a school for her son.
Thankfully they found a school for Jake, and in doing so they found a caretaker for him for when Jean was gone.
“I fell in love with him instantly,” Kerry Bremer, Jake’s teacher, told WCVB.
She couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to Jake when his mother died.
Bremer came up with a plan and discussed it with her husband.
“If you need a backup plan for Jake, then our family is happy to make him part of our family,” Bremer said. “She said: ‘I’ll sleep better tonight than I have in a long time.'”
Over the following years Jake got to know the Bremer family and became extremely comfortable with them.
“But when we first decided to do this and I met him again, he said: ‘You’re the dad? You’re Dave the dad?’ That was it for a very long time. I was Dave the dad,” Dave Bremer said.
Then one day after Jean put Jake on the bus to school she went inside to take a nap. She didn’t wake up.
Kerry knew exactly what had to be done. She and her family officially took Jake into their family and would raise him as one of their own.
“My mom went to heaven,” Jake said. “She’s always in my heart.”
My heart is bursting with love. What the Bremer family did was extraordinary.
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