Pat's Story

Pat  |  Donor Wife and Mother

After spending some time with Pat, you’d never know the grief that she has endured. Pat lost her husband Don, after a car accident on the way to the Grand Canyon. The accident left Pat with a concussion and the tough decision to donate her husband’s corneas and other soft tissue. Not long after her husband’s death, Pat dealt with tragedy a second time when she lost her stepdaughter, who was nine months pregnant, to an aortic aneurysm. Her stepdaughter’s corneas were donated to a two-year-old girl in Mexico.

Fate took a turn when Pat met her second husband, Dick, through an online dating site. He noticed a photograph of her first husband in his high school uniform and was stunned at what he saw. “Don and I used to play rotating right tackles in middle school,” Dick recalled. “Coach would always yell, Smith get in there! Ling get out!”

Becoming part of a donor family has helped Pat deal with her grief by knowing that other people have benefited from the last gifts of her loved ones. “What greater gift could there be than to contribute to the transition from “death to life” for another person,” Pat said. “I have learned that grieving teaches many lessons -- that every minute of life is precious and that grief without hope is devastating.  Being a donor family gives two gifts - the gift of life and the gift of hope.”

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