Losing your child is the most heartbreaking experience anyone can go through. This family had to live through the worst experience but they found a silver lining; they were able to help someone else avoid the same fate.
Keep reading this heartwarming story to know more.
Having to go through a traumatic experience is one thing, but having to make tough decisions in the wake of it is another heartbreaking moment. When a child is put on life support, making the decision to remove them from it is an incredibly tough one. The family has to then also decide whether they are willing to donate the organs to another child who might be in need.
Such is the story of one Dallas family. Their decision to donate their little boy’s organs helped save two lives. And when they met the children they had helped, they formed a bond of a lifetime.
37-year-old Jenny Burns lived every parent’s nightmare when she realized her 14-month-old son Beau was missing. When she looked for him for a good three minutes, she had the horrible inkling, knowing where he might be; in the pool.
“When I couldn’t find him — I searched for a good three minutes — I knew he was in the pool. You just start hoping and praying,” she said in an interview. After she removed her son from the pool, her husband Rob performed CPR. He was able to get the heartbeat going before first responders arrived to the scene.
Beau was promptly airlifted to the Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, but unfortunately, he did not regain consciousness.
Four days after his drowning accident, doctors told the devastated parents news no parent wants to hear; their child would not recover. This was the point that they introduced the idea of organ donation to them. “While it was a very tough day for us, I knew that someone was going to get that miracle phone call, so for me, it was a no-brainer,” Rob said later.
“It was a leap of faith,” Jenny said. She went on, “You really had to trust that the decision you’re making is for the best, and it’s so hard at that moment. You don’t know what it will be like knowing that you’re saving lives.”
In the same hospital in another wing, a 4-month-old baby boy named Eli was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. He was waiting for a heart transplant. When his mother, April Flores, got the call, she could not believe it.
“The night we found out, before bed, I prayed for a heart for Eli because he has a whole life to live,” she said in an interview. “At 3:47 a.m. I got the call from our heart transplant team … after the transplant, it was an instantly different Eli. There was so much joy I could see through his face.”
Last year in October, Jenny and Rob finally met Eli who had already celebrated his second birthday.
“That first initial meeting, looking into Eli’s mom’s eyes and just seeing how grateful she was and then knowing that Eli’s living so well because of our decision … it was just overwhelming,” Jenny shared. “Rob and I like to say it was Beau’s gift, but now it’s Eli’s heart. The heartbeat was so strong and so fast — a little boy’s heartbeat.”
April also said that there was an “instant connection” between her family and Beau’s parents. “It is hard to put into words what they have done giving my son a chance at life, but we are connected forever,” she said of it.
In addition to his heart, little Beau had also donated his kidney and liver. A 4-year-old named Leonel, who was born with Citrullinemia Type 1, got his liver. While a 40-year-old received the little boy’s kidney. The woman has not responded to Jenny and Rob’s request to see her.
Beau’s parents met with Leonel and his mother Ginamarie Rodriguez, in November 2023.
“I don’t know how to explain it, but it felt like family,” says Ginamarie. “Going through everything we both went through, we’re all grieving. I’ll be forever thankful to them.”
