Taylor's Gift (22 page)

Our whole carload was a mess. Then I heard Todd's breathing change. He turned to look at me, and I could see anger boiling beneath the surface. By now, both kids had buried their heads in pillows and were openly sobbing. Ryan was wailing.

Under his breath Todd said, “Are you kidding me?” He raised his fist in the air and shook it at God. “This is what our family is now? This is what You want?” He was as mad as I'd ever heard him. “I can't even console my own children,” he said through clenched teeth.

I couldn't look at him because a big eighteen-wheeler semi was passing to my left, and I needed to stay focused on the road. It was a plain white truck, and it pulled right in front of us. I had to hit the brakes hard. As I did, I read the only thing written on the truck—“Taylor.”

“Look!” I said.

Todd looked first and then looked at me. “She's here,” he said excitedly.

We told the kids to look, and through swollen eyes, they saw it too.

It didn't make our tears go away completely, and it didn't take away all our pain, but it was another “of course” moment. We were on vacation and, of course, Taylor was there too. It was as if
she said, “I'm right here. I'm with you,” and knowing that helped us to put the brakes on our tears.

Not long afterward, we decided to pull off the road for a stop in Alexandria, Louisiana. We realized it was probably time for a Saturday evening mass, so we looked for a church. With the emotional state we were in, we needed to hear from God.

Looking at the church, I was disappointed. It was a little country parish in a bad part of town. We considered just getting back on the road and saying some prayers out loud in the car. God would surely understand. But instead we parked and went in. When I saw the aging priest, I wondered if we had made the wrong decision. What could he have to say that would encourage us? But boy, was I wrong. During the sermon, he talked about how God had already picked out our cross, and though His path may be hard to follow, He had a divine plan for each of us. The priest said there might be hard days ahead but to keep moving in God's direction because beyond those days would shine days of glory.

To me, his words were another “of course” moment. Of course, God had a plan and, of course, we needed to be reminded that He was in charge. And, of course, He'd get that message to us just when we needed it most. I left that mass feeling that our family had been blessed by God, and we just needed to keep moving forward. To follow Him—no matter how hard it was.

We'd been back from the beach for only a few days when my neighbor Trista, the Grief Fairy, called. “I need to tell you about the email I just got. Can I come over?” she asked.

Ever since that day when I had told her I really wanted to meet the person who had Taylor's heart, she'd been searching the internet to see what she could learn. Weeks earlier, she'd read a post on Transplant Café, an online message board for transplant recipients, where someone had said they thought their sister-in-law had received Taylor's heart. Trista had investigated further, and
with my permission she'd reached out to the man who'd posted the message, but it had been weeks and we hadn't heard anything.

“I've got news,” Trista said. “I may have found the woman who has Taylor's heart. She's a nurse, a mother of two boys, and I'm waiting to hear if she wants to connect. If she does, is it okay if I give her your email address?”

I couldn't believe it. We'd found the woman who had Taylor's heart, and we might be able to connect! Since the day we made the decision to donate Taylor's organs, it was the one thing I wanted more than anything else. Through tear-filled eyes, I looked at Trista, who was still waiting for an answer, and said, “Of course!”

P
ATRICIA
W
INTERS
T
EMPE
, A
RIZONA

When the third call came, the transplant coordinator said, “We got an awesome heart; this one is really going to happen.” And so it did.

As soon as Patricia woke up from the surgery, she said, “Who is she? I want to know who she is!” Somehow she sensed it was from a female donor, but the doctors couldn't tell her more.

While she was in surgery, her husband, Joe, got a call from a friend in Colorado who told him about a local skiing accident and a girl who had died, leaving her heart to a thirty-nine-year-old woman in Arizona. By the time Patricia's heart surgery was done, Joe already knew the donor, so although the doctors couldn't tell Patricia who it was, Joe could. He pulled out his laptop and showed Patricia pictures and videos of the thirteen-year-old donor.

“I can't now,” Patricia said. “Please put that away.” It was too soon and too much to bear, knowing that the donor was a teenage girl. As the mother of two young boys, she couldn't imagine what those parents must be going through. Though her new heart was beating strongly, it was also broken for the family who had donated their daughter's organs.

She couldn't get them out of her mind.

Over the next few months Patricia felt a pull toward the people who had given her such a precious gift. She wanted to get to know them, so while she was lying in bed with her laptop, she pulled up pictures and videos of the girl. She watched as the family started a foundation, and viewed online clips of news reports in which the mom said she wanted to reconnect with her daughter's heart. Patricia wanted that too. But as a nurse and as a mom, she respected the rules. She wouldn't contact them until the six-month waiting period was up.

But without her knowledge, one of Patricia's relatives had been posting messages on Transplant Café. Under articles about the girl's skiing accident, Patricia's relative posted a comment that said, “I know who got the girl's heart.” When the girl's neighbor reached out and offered to connect the commenter to the family, the relative got scared. After a couple of weeks, he finally admitted to Patricia what had been going on and apologized for the mess he'd created.

Patricia was worried that the whole thing could be upsetting to the family.
That poor mother!
Patricia thought. She immediately emailed the neighbor: “I'm so sorry for all of this; I just found out. Of course I'd like to connect with the family.”

Todd

After the plane landed in Denver, I turned on my phone. Tara must have forgotten to turn hers off because I heard hers ping. Then ping, ping. Then ping, ping, ping. I looked at her and said, “Wow, somebody sure wants to talk to you.”

She was wrapped in a blanket and leaning against the window. I couldn't tell if she'd been crying or not, but she looked as if she could burst into tears at any moment. As the plane taxied, she reached for her phone. I got busy with mine, catching up on what I'd missed during our flight from Dallas.

Suddenly, Tara got excited. “Todd, Todd,” she said, nudging me. “Trista just texted me, and she forwarded an email from Patricia Winters!” Her hand started shaking as she handed me her phone. It was an email from the heart recipient.

“Read it!” she said, obviously too nervous to do it herself.

I opened Trista's email and read the forwarded message. She said her name was Patricia Winters, that she was a nurse and a mom of two boys. She explained how a relative had left the message on Transplant Café and didn't tell her about it until recently. “Please
tell the Storches they can contact me any way they want,” she'd written to Trista. Then she included her contact information.

We had just arrived in Denver to meet Jeff Kartus, the pancreas/kidney recipient, and his family. Only in God's perfect timing would we also get our first email from the heart recipient. “Well,
of course
, we'd hear from her now,” I said.

The email was a big relief to me. I knew how much it meant to Tara to connect with the person who had Taylor's heart. That had been her one desire since we agreed to make the gift. “Do you want to email her back?” I asked.

“I can't. I just can't,” Tara said, choking back sobs. “You do it.”

I emailed Patricia and told her how happy we were to finally connect with her. “But we're at the airport. We're meeting the kidney/pancreas recipient. You can understand that Tara doesn't want to email right now, but she sends her love.”

We were less than twenty-four hours from meeting the first recipient, and now I was a little conflicted. From the moment we made the decision, we both wanted to connect with the people who received Taylor's organs, but I honestly never thought we would. I didn't think we would ever know their names, let alone meet them in person. Personally, I didn't need to meet Jeff to know Taylor's gift made a difference. Nothing in my life was missing that would be made full just because I shook a recipient's hand or looked into his or her eyes.

It was different for Tara. She'd longed for a connection with the recipients since the beginning. She looked forward to meeting them and bonding with them. In some small way, I think she hoped it would connect her with Taylor.

While walking through the airport, my stomach knotted as I thought of all that could go wrong. I worried about Tara. I knew she had high expectations for the meeting. What if it didn't work out? What if the meeting didn't live up to her expectations, and she had some kind of breakdown while we were there? My most important goal for this meeting was to protect her.

But although there was a lot to consider, I still felt an incredible pull to meet them. Our goal was to encourage as many people as we possibly could to register for organ donation. Hearing an organ recipient's side of the story and sharing that in the documentary would be an emotionally powerful addition to our story. It would be hard, but I looked forward to meeting them.

“I have to get out of here,” Tara said. She paced the perimeter of our hotel room. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen her pace. I had become used to her being inactive, sitting and staring into space for hours.

“Let's take a walk,” I said.

We had a couple of hours before we were to meet the documentary crew for dinner, so we decided to walk to the outdoor mall. The 16th Street Mall in Denver is a one-mile pedestrian street lined on both sides with restaurants, retailers, and street performers. As we strolled, Tara stopped occasionally to look in the shop windows.

“I need something to wear to the foundation dinner,” she said.

“Maybe you should look while we're here.”

We were scheduled to fly back into Dallas late Friday afternoon, and the fund-raising dinner was to be held that night at a friend's house. Though I was surprised she had the desire to shop, we both knew if she wanted to get something before the dinner, this would be her only opportunity.

“I want to find a dress. I want a sundress. And I want it to be Tiffany blue,” she said.

“Good luck with that,” I said, eyeing the fall collections already in the displays. I knew why she said she wanted that dress in that color. When Taylor was little, her favorite color was purple. As she grew older and became more aware of her own features, her favorite color was Tiffany blue. “Because it matches my eyes,” she'd say.

Tara was still discussing the dress she wanted when she spotted one of her favorite stores. “Oh, there's an Ann Taylor; I'm going to see if they have anything.”

“See the Starbucks?” I asked, pointing across the street. “I'll wait for you there. When you're finished, come and get me.”

I ordered a coffee and found a seat near the window so I could people watch while I waited for my laptop to load. Through the window, I saw Tara leave Ann Taylor empty-handed and walk down the street toward another store.
Good luck finding that dress
, I thought. But I was happy she had the energy to shop. I think being away from Coppell, freed from the fear of running into people who knew her, helped.

I looked up to see Tara pulling up a chair. I wasn't sure how much time had elapsed; I had become engrossed in my work. A quick glance showed she wasn't carrying any packages. She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. She looked bummed.

“No luck?”

She shook her head. “I'm not finding anything. Everything is in fall colors.”

“Maybe you're being too picky?” I asked. After all, it was a pretty tall order to find what she was looking for.

“Maybe, but it's what I want.”

I looked at my watch. “You've got forty-five minutes left. Do you want to keep looking, or are you giving up?”

“I want to keep looking,” she said.

I marveled at her newfound energy. Just a few weeks earlier she wouldn't have had the ability to even dress herself, let alone go shopping for a dress.

Thirty minutes later, Tara was back with a bag in her hand and a wide smile on her face. “You'll never guess what happened!” she said excitedly. “As soon as I left here, I walked outside and said, ‘Taylor, you know what I'm looking for.' She's the one who always
found the best clothes when we went shopping. Well, the very next store I went into had all of these dark colors, and then I saw this little piece of Tiffany blue fabric peeking from the rack. I went over and pulled out the hanger—and it was a sundress! And guess what? It was my size!”

I couldn't remember seeing Tara so excited. Even I was excited.

“But that's not all,” she said, gushing. “While I was walking into the dressing room, I flipped the dress over my arm and the tag fell out. Look at this!” she urged, pulling the dress from the bag and showing me the attached tag.

I expected it to be the dress's price, and from her enthusiasm I expected it to be cheap. But instead of the price tag, she showed me a brownish-gray square tag, and written in yellow cursive at the top was a single word.

Taylor.

“Are you kidding me?” I said, picking up the tag. Finding the dress she wanted, in the way she had, was pretty unbelievable, but that tag made it seem preposterous. “It's the same font we selected for the website!”

“No way!” she said, looking closer. She hadn't noticed that.

I knew the answer to the next question before asking, but I asked it anyway, just so I could see her smile. “Did it fit?”

Like I hoped, she answered with an even bigger grin. “
Of course!
It fit perfectly.”

From everything that had happened on this trip—from the timing of Patricia's email to the “Taylor-made” dress Tara found—it was clear God was very much with us. So I'm not sure why we were so nervous on the drive to Jeff Kartus's house the next afternoon, but we were. We were both anxious, maybe even a little scared, wondering if we'd like them and if they'd like us. We had no idea what to expect. We'd never done anything like this before, nor did we know anyone who had.

As I contemplated my feelings, the best I could compare it to would be how I might have felt someday when Taylor started dating. I would want to meet the guy she was with, and I would want to connect with him. Most of all, I would want to know he would take good care of her and keep her safe. That's the same thing I wanted from Jeff.

With only a few more miles to go, we took the exit off the interstate. I silently prayed, asking God to bless our meeting. If things didn't go well, I wasn't sure how Tara or I would react.

We pulled up to the Kartuses' house, and the whole family tumbled out before we even put the car in park. It was immediately obvious who Jeff was—the guy in the cowboy hat. Before I could even open my door, Tara was jumping out of the car and running toward him. I wasn't sure whether Jeff and his wife, Vanessa, were huggers or not, but they were now. I watched as Tara hugged Jeff and then said, “Where is she?”

Jeff lifted his shirt and pointed to a scar. “She's right here.”

Tara ran her trembling fingers over his scar, and in his slow, methodical way, Jeff said, “I'm taking good care of her.”

Thank You, God!

It could have been an awkward moment, meeting a strange woman for the first time and all she wants to do is touch your abdominal scar, but if Jeff or Vanessa were freaked out, they didn't let it show. Tara later told me, “I don't know why I did it, but it's just where my head was. I just wanted to physically touch her again somehow.”