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A tearful Stacey Boger and her 20-month-old daughter, Sarah, attend hospital ceremony. |
URING THE SIX years he was on earth, Brian Henson never took in a sunrise. Never watched a baseball game. Never saw the faces of his parents or siblings.
Only after Brian died did his eyes finally see.
He is one of 29 area organ donors honored with a holiday memorial Angel Tree dedicated last week at Mary Washington Hospital.
Brian was 6 years old when he died in 1997, from complications of what should have been a routine surgery on his hip.
The fact that he lived that long was a miracle in itself. Born with cerebral palsy and other birth injuries, doctors told his parents, Anna and Paul, that their son would die by age 2.
Anna Henson says that every day they had with Brian "was a gift."
Because of Brian's handicaps, there was a lot he couldn't do. His parents had to feed him through a tube, and he couldn't communicate well.
"If there's one thing that wasn't wrong with him, it was his ears," said Brian's brother, Justin, 13.
Brian loved the sound of Velcro being ripped, loved the sound of his family's voices, loved music. Even if he'd been crying, his family said, his face would break into a huge smile when they started playing Crosby, Stills & Nash CDs.
Brian's family adjusted to the special care he needed, but there was one thing they always wished they could change.
"If we could have given him one thing, it would have been his vision," Paul Henson said.
There was nothing wrong with Brian's eyes. The reason he couldn't see was neurological--his eyes and brain couldn't communicate.
When he died, his parents immediately wanted him to be an organ donor. Because of his birth injuries, only his corneas could be transplanted.
"We wanted Brian to live on through someone else," Paul Henson said. "Ironically, he was blind during his life, but his corneas went to other people to help them see. So what Brian's eyes couldn't see while he was alive, they can see now."
The Angel Tree program that honors Brian and others was organized by Jan Broom, whose daughter, Shannon, became an organ donor after a car crash more than three years ago.
The tree is intended not only to memorialize the area's organ donors, but also to increase awareness about the need for donation.
Families of 29 area organ donors purchased engraved crystal ornaments, with their loved ones' names, dates of birth, and dates of death.
At a ceremony Wednesday evening, each family handled its ornament as if it were terribly fragile. They looked for perfect spots to hang them on the tree, then left them dangling delicately on a branch.
Most families embraced. Some cried. Then they stepped back to look at the ornaments. Many stepped forward again to wipe fingerprints off the glass, or adjust the ornament so it caught the light just right.
Stacey Boger had her daughter, Sarah, hang an ornament in honor of her grandfather, Rogers Paul Roy, who died last year of a massive heart attack, a week before Sarah was born. He was 59.
"We wanted to have an ornament for him for remembering," Boger said, "and as something for my daughter, as a remembrance
of her Pa-Pa, who she'll never know."
Boger said she knew her father wanted to be an organ donor.
"It's the best thing he could have done," she said. "And I know he's looking over the people he donated to. Part of him is still living out there, helping people, just like he did when he was alive."
For Judy Hampton, this will be the first holiday season without her daughter, Terri Modelski, who died unexpectedly in February at age 25. She said she didn't know her daughter wanted to be an organ donor, though Terri had expressed that wish on her driver's license.
"She was young; it just wasn't something we talked about," she said. "But it's something you would have expected her to do. She was a giving person."
A graduate of Courtland High School, Modelski was finishing her degree in psychology and elementary education at Mary Washington College when she died. She wanted to be a teacher.
Modelski's heart went to a young man in North Carolina; her liver to a young man in Virginia.
Hampton said that at first she didn't want her daughter's organs to be harvested.
"I had just found out she wouldn't live, and then they were talking about her being an organ donor," she said. "I was like, 'No. Leave her alone. She's been through enough.' But then her dad said that was what Terri wanted and that's what we should do."
Hampton said the holidays are going to be hard for her family this year, but that she's glad that her daughter's passing has helped other people.
At the base of the tree is a glass plaque, explaining that the tree honors those who gave the gift of life, or sight, or health to someone else by being an organ or tissue donor.
At the bottom of the plaque is a quote from Shannon Broom, written two years before her accident: "Lifethe point is so simple it boggles the mind. It's to love.That's it. That's all."
