My husband and I had the opportunity to go to a very special ceremony this last weekend. It was a ceremony for the families of people who had donated organs this past year. I'm not sure I fully understood what the ceremony was all about until we got there and started looking over the program. I had originally thought that the group was just asking for permission to share Brinley's picture in a slideshow. It was so much more than that. The entire program was an effort to let the families know how valued their loved one's gift of organ donation was. There were brief testimonies of some who were organ recipients. One girl was 16 years old and one statement that she made really stuck out. She said that she truly knows what being thankful means. In a world that is so self-focused it is unusual for a teenager to grasp being truly thankful, but she does and I'm so thankful that she shared that with us. It made me feel like Brinley's donations were all worthwhile to someone.
I wasn't particularly thrilled about attending this event maybe in part because I knew that it would be emotionally draining to some degree. I was however holding it together fairly well until my husband shared something that he had been working through. He said that he was thinking about all of the award ceremonies that we expect to attend for all of the kids that this would be the only one for our girl Brinley. He was right and here I was not even wanting to go. Although it was certainly something that I had never anticipated going to in my lifetime I was so very proud of my girl when we were there.
I had someone ask me if it was a difficult decision to donate her organs. It is so hard for me to answer that. My thoughts continue to be that Brinley was a gift to us. I have always prayed that if anything my children are a blessing to other people. I don't care if they are popular, gifted, or athletically inclined. I just want for them to be a blessing so I have no choice but to share them with others. So to answer the question, it gives me comfort to know that even in her death Brinley was a blessing to someone else because I shared her.
