92-Year-Old Woman Adopts 76-Year-Old Cousin: 'I feel very happy'

Muriel Clayton is already 92 years old, but she has once again become a "new mother" and it's all because the woman from Dallas just adopted Mary Smith, 76, a cousin whom she always regarded as her own. The adoption was made legal this Tuesday, June 9, according to Today.

"As I have gotten older, it's kind of like my life is a beautiful jigsaw puzzle, but there was a piece missing," Muriel told Today. "And that piece was Mary. And I got her in my life puzzle, that's what I wanted to do."

Their parents are actually siblings --- Muriel's mother is Mary's father's sister --- which makes them first cousins. When Mary was 11 years old, however, her father died of a heart attack. Meanwhile, her mother fell ill and was unable to take care of her daughter due to the mental illness. Since then, Muriel took over and raised Mary as her own. When this happened, Muriel was already raising two daughters.

"They never thought of her [Mary] as anything else but their sister," Muriel said, according to Huffington Post. "Two of her younger sisters didn't even know they were not her natural sisters until they were older."

The nonagenarian, who has since been widowed twice, said she desired to officially adopt Mary long ago but because her real mother was still alive despite her illness, she respected the situation. However, just last Mother's Day, Muriel, quite amusingly, "popped" the question.

"I said, 'I need to ask you something.' And she looked at me, and probably thought, 'Oh my goodness, mother is going into a nursing home or something," Muriel recounted. "I said, 'I've thought about really adopting you for real for a long time, how do you feel about that?"

Mary could not contain her happiness upon learning the good news and said that she always felt part of Muriel's family. Yet, she remains "pleasantly surprised" by the turn of events. "She's very much that way - she always comes up with something special," Mary said via Today.

According to Yahoo Parenting, cases of adult adoptions are not usually being tracked, but this "may happen more often than we think," says April Donwoodie of the Donaldson Adoption Institute.

On June 9, Muriel and Mary went to a Dallas court house together and with Judge Kim Cooks presiding, they made everything official. After which, the mother-daughter pair celebrated the moment by having lunch with Mary's daughters, who are also amazed by their mother's story. "My mom is very lucky and blessed to have been raised by her," one of Mary's daughter, Tracy, said in the report.