Around 8 years ago I received a card from Kari’s family. I had just started communicating directly with Kari's family, and this was a "Happy Birthday to your Lungs!" card. It would have been Kari's 19th birthday. Inside of the card, they included a beautiful little poem written about Kari by one of her friends…
Around 6 years ago, I got an email from Kari’s Mom – she just wanted to let me know that she gave my email address to one of Kari’s friends – the one who wrote the poem that she had given me earlier. She wanted me to know that I might be getting an email from her.
A few days later – on what would have been the 4th anniversary of the day Kari passed away – I got that email… She introduced herself, and told me a little about her relationship with Kari. She said they ran together – she, to keep in shape for cross-country, and Kari to keep in shape for volleyball. She told me about running with Kari, or really walking and goofing around, a few days before Kari died. She told me about going to one another’s homes and seeing each other in their prom dresses, which they were to be wearing in a few days. Kari never got to wear hers…
Her family moved from Kari’s hometown not too long after. She told me that she couldn’t run for a long time afterwards because her memories of Kari were too strong. She told me she was back to running a few years later – and she “talked” to Kari on her runs to keep her from slowing.
Then she told me that the reason she was reaching out to me was because she “wanted to run with Kari again…” She told me that she, and several friends, planned to drive out from Iowa and climb with me, and with my “Kari’s Klimbers” team. If you know anything about me, you know how that made me feel...
She’s come out for several climbs – and whether she comes to Chicago, or Laura and I head out to Iowa, we’ve been together two or three times every year since that first year…
That friend may not know this – but she helped stoke my passion for telling people about Kari, and about organ donation. Don’t get me wrong – I was yapping about Kari and what it feels like to breathe with her lungs for four years before I met her friend – but that friend added a new dimension… She let me see how deeply her friends loved Kari, and how deeply Kari loved her friends…
That friend also developed a passion for telling others about organ donation… After her first email to me, and before we met – she wrote a second, beautiful poem… Since then, she and I have given a few presentations where she read her poem about Kari and me, and then I got to introduce both her and Kari. I use her poem so often when I speak, to let people see Kari through the eyes of one of her friends… She’s volunteered for Iowa Donor Network and the My Angel foundation, and that friend has touched so many lives, and told so many about organ donation – and about a guy in Chicago who breathes with her friend’s lungs…
We’re driving out to Des Moines tomorrow. On Saturday, I get to see Jenn marry Joe.
Kari gave me so many things when she and her family gave me her lungs. She gave me life. She gave me more time with Laura and my family and friends. She gave me the ability to breathe in a way I’d never dreamed possible. But she also gave me her family and friends, and she gave me Jenn…
