I posted a bunch of pictures on my Facebook site of my kids and I and our experience at the 2012 Rose Parade where we had to the chance to honor my wife Krista. She was one of 72 floragraph honorees from across the U.S., Japan, Taiwan and Canada to be on the float. She was the only one from Canada. The probability of having this opportunity is insanely small and I really can only say that I think it was from God. Some of you may be thinking, "For sure!" others who don't believe in God may just be thinking, "Well it is crazy and I'm glad you got to do it, but it wasn't from God, it was chance, and you made the most of it." Whatever your opinion is, I am sure you were glad for my family. I was too, but I also thought, "Man, why did WE get to do this and not someone else?" I mean really, why? I don't know the answer to that question, I really don't think I will ever know the answer to that question, but it will be one of the many questions that I want to have a long conversation with Jesus about when I talk to Him one day. I was glad for it though and did want to make the most of it. It is hard to describe all the events that went on, but I did try and summarize them for eWomen's Network, the company who sponsored our family to take part in this beautiful and hard adventure. The asked me for a "little blurb" on what my experience from the Rose Parade was like for their eWomen's Network, eMagazine and if you know anything about me, I have a hard time writing "blurbs". So I wrote a three and a quarter page journal like thing about my thoughts on the Parade. If you really want to know my thoughts about the parade, this is the thing to read.
I am going to share it here in case any of you were interested on hearing those thoughts. Some things you should know so that they make sense when you read it, a character list of sorts... Jenn is was my organization contact at eWomen's for the trip. Sandra Yancey is CEO of eWomen Network, her husband Kym is President. Nancy Michaels was another lady sponsored by eWomen's to be there and rode on the float. She is a liver transplant recipient. Bryan Stewart is the chairman of the Donate Life Rose Parade float committee and pretty much ran the show with the float stuff. Cora Johnson is the lady who is awesome and helped the kids and I decorate the float.
eWomenNetwork e-Magazine Contribution
Where do I begin? I guess a good place to start would be at the beginning, which may be too much for a “blurb” as you put it Jenn, hahahahahaha, but I feel like I should put it all out there and then you can take what you wish.
September (don’t worry, I’m not going to go month by month here, it’s just a paragraph title)
When I received an e-mail from the co-ordinator of the Southern Alberta Organ and Tissue Donation Program and she said to me that they had an opportunity for me, I actually thought they were going to ask me to speak at one of their memorial services or something else. I gladly do that for them when they ask, I think it’s important to connect with other people who are hurting or going through things like myself, and I always said that if I was ever asked to speak about my situation and story that I would do it, but I wouldn’t seek out venues to share my story. Anyway, I thought that if they were going to ask me to speak that “opportunity” was a really weird and slightly inappropriate way to ask someone to speak at a function about Organ Donation and the loss that comes with it.
It turned out that she was not asking me to speak but informing me that they had received an invitation from the Rose Parade to have one of the organ donors that had come into the Southern Alberta program represented in a picture on a float in the Rose Parade. She continued, saying that they thought that my wife Krista and our family would be great representatives, that she would be the only representative from our entire country and that I would be able to travel to Pasadena to take part in honoring her. I really couldn’t think of a more crazy and beautiful turn of events. She mentioned that the company was eWomenNetwork, and I had never heard of it before, likely due to the fact that I am a teacher, not an entrepreneur, nor a female. Hahahahaha! I had no idea what I was getting into, how it would be run, or anything like that, so she gave me the number of Bryan Stewart who oversees the Donate Life Float. After a conversation with him I felt excited, nervous, sad, and pretty much every other positive and negative emotional adjective you could think of, but I was convinced that my family would benefit from this and that it would be such an unforgettable way for my kids and I to honour Krista together.
December 10th Weekend
I brought Jaxon (8) and Grace (6) down to Pasadena in early December to decorate Krista’s floragraph. Sophie who is 2 did not make the trip because she would not have been able to be in a busy decorating facility and focus for 6+ hours working on a piece of art! She stayed at home with Krista’s mom for the weekend. That weekend alone was worth this whole thing. The kids and I had such a great time together doing the floragraph and they were totally into it. Not upset or sad, but serious, it was important to them, and they knew it was important to me. We met a great lady named Cora Johnson who was a float rider and is extremely involved with Donate Life. She worked all day with us on the floragraph, guiding us along the way but letting us do the work. She was gentle, kind, understanding and patient and the kids and I just loved her. Every volunteer with the Donate Life Float was so positive and helpful and interested in us as a family. It really felt like the event had been organized with just the families in mind, that the Float was an afterthought, if you know what I mean. The Float, even though it is the center of attention in the actual parade, is really the culmination of the positive experiences of a large group of people grieving the loss of their loved ones in an intensely positive and well organized environment, along with the joy of organ recipients. It really was quite the perfect storm for a meaningful experience. The Float then, is secondary to the families and showing them care. It felt like if Donate Life could help us do something that would positively affect our family in dealing with our loss then they had achieved their goal.
December 29th-Jan 3rd
To come back to help finish the float and take part in seeing the parade in person was icing on the cake. Having the chance to meet Sandra and Kym was so great. It is cool when people who are successful and busy and are involved in many great things take the time to meet a person they don’t know, and really meet them where they are at. When they truly listen, invest in a conversation, look you in the eyes and tell you they care about your story and are honoured to give you this opportunity, well I can’t put into words how meaningful that is. To meet the people who started a company that make giving back to the world around them a priority and be the recipient of the generosity is a great thing. Especially when you didn’t know them at all and feel like they care about you just because they do. Generosity is something that I am not sure always makes its way into all facets of North American society, but I really appreciated the generosity of the many people who contribute to the eWomenNetwork Foundation. It was great to meet a few of them as well. Jeanie Douthitt, Teresa Surya Ma Lamb, and Laura Gisborne were really nice people as well, and it’s humbling to meet people like that.
Meeting Nancy Michaels was also awesome. She has been through so much and to see her on her feet and working at being her best was so encouraging. Meeting her and other organ recipients is such an encouragement to me and many of the other donor families. To see the thankfulness of the recipients for their organ donor lets me know that Krista’s gift of life is not going to be forgotten. It seems to me that in our world, people buy things, they are shiny and new and great, but when they get a bit old, or a new version comes out, the once great thing isn’t so great anymore. I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t just like that for people who received organs. You know what I mean? Maybe the novelty wears off or something like that. When you meet organ recipients you immediately know how thankful they are for their donors because they don’t hesitate to tell you. They are fully aware of the reason that they are living. They think about their donor and the loved ones of that donor every day and it is nice to know that someone out there is thinking about Krista and us and appreciative. I don’t want those people to feel guilt about receiving life, I want them to take advantage of the chance they have. I wrote this in a letter to the staff at my high school the day that Krista passed away because it summed up the tough reality of organ donation, “When the neurologist and radiologist and internal medicine doctor saw the CT scan of Krista's brain and did a number of other tests for brain death, they all pointed to the same thing, that in fact Krista's brain was dead and dying and her heart rate was the next thing to fail. This made her an organ donor candidate so they took her to Calgary today to pass her organs on to other people desperately in need of some hope. Krista would never have had this any other way. It is quite a thing, praying for your wife to be healed, not seeing that answer, and then realizing that she is the answer to prayer for someone who is anxiously awaiting an organ or tissue transplant. That her organs and tissues could help out a number of other families, that the pain you are feeling is similar to the pain the other families are feeling as they wait for a donation. As I helped load her body into the ambulance to go to Calgary, I realized that in fact her spirit is with our Lord in heaven and that in fact this shell in front of me was just that, a shell of who she was.”
This trip was full of emotion, a 6 Flags Theme Park of emotion, that being that there were A LOT of ups and downs. Having a part in finishing the decorating of the Float, sharing in the joy and sorrows of organ donor families and recipients was something I am sure I could not have experienced anywhere else. It felt like a new family, too big to remember all the names, like second and third cousins you haven’t ever met, but a family nonetheless. We could all immediately connect. I don’t know if I can fully describe to you the feeling of connectedness you feel when you all bear similar wounds and scars but are working together toward one positive goal and message. The message is that organ donation saves lives. It’s sad but joyous, unbearable and hopeful, heart wrenching and heart warming. It’s the beauty and the darkness of life all in one. But it’s right. It’s important.
I can’t really tell you that I thought I needed to grieve Krista in a way like this. Life has a way of settling into the “new normal” the term counsellors and people looking for some way to describe life after losing someone monumentally important to them use. I don’t know that I would have missed out on some important part of grieving her that hadn’t been met already but after the experience I can say this; going through this event has helped me process the pain of losing Krista in my life in another helpful, positive way. This way of honouring her has brought an already close family closer. The message of organ donation has been spread around through things like classic media and the social media. Many people followed my Facebook updates and pictures and talked to their friends about it. There are so many positives that have come from this opportunity in my world and the other 72 families and float riders that it is hard to deny the beauty and hope that has been birthed out of desperation and sadness. It is something that I will ALWAYS be thankful that I and my children had a chance to in. Thank you.
This experience is a gift from God I have no doubt. I am confused as to why it came to my family with all the others that have gone through thing s like us out there, but it “is what it is “ as they say. Honestly I feel blessed by God and I trust in Him. I believe in Jesus Christ. Faith in God and in Christ is a giant part of how I filter my world. How I look to the future. It does not mean that I have not told Him that I think He got His plan really, really wrong and that I think He is pretty much an idiot for Krista’s death. However, once I get over myself and really examine what it means to have faith in something greater than myself, I feel like I need to trust Him. All people go through hardship, the 72 floragraph stories show that and that is just a minute sampling of stories worldwide. If I believe in a God who made this place (creation, evolution it doesn’t matter to me, the method is not the important part in my opinion) then I have to believe that He is smarter than me even though I don’t understand why certain things are allowed to go on in this place, or in my life. Sometimes faith is not easy to understand, if it was, I don’t know that I would appreciate it. Who would really trust in a God they knew every exact thing about, if that was the case, then you would be as smart as Him and it wouldn’t be very easy to follow someone you think you’re equal to.
Finally, thank you so, so,so,so,so much for this insanely rare and precious experience. It has helped my kids and I. It has helped our families. It has brought honour to Krista who was a great woman. It has promoted organ and tissue donation. I don’t really see any downside to this at all except that I had to come back to Canada from the warm California sun! Thank you, I really don’t know how I can thank you enough.
Jared.
There you go, those are many of my thoughts about the parade. If you are still reading this blog can I ask you to think about doing one thing right now? If you have not already signed the back of your Health Care card to make you an organ donor, would you please do it? Then talk to your spouse, significant other, friends, parents, acquaintance, and enemies about doing it. That would be great. Thanks.
I pulled out my health care card, and the cards for my two boys and signed all three to ensure organ donation. Then, I talked with my husband and if he should ever find his health care card, he's going to sign his as well! Thanks for the reminder, Jared!
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