Memorial Quilts Warm Hearts at Recognition Ceremonies

A little boy runs into the hotel ballroom lobby, drawn to one of the many handmade memorial quilts hanging there. “Look, honey,” says his grandmother, pointing to the quilt-square she’d made. “Say hi to Grandpa.” Her eyes well up as the boy touches his late grandfather’s image, which had been transferred from a photograph to the fabric.

Each square in the quilts represents a personal memorial to a loved one who became a donor.We are all hopeful that 80 years after the isolation of insulin dramatically changed the outlook for patients with type I diabetes, we are now in the early stages of another quantum leap forward,” says Thomas R. Hefty, M.D.

The five-by-five-foot quilts formed an artful honor guard for the annual Donor Family Recognition Ceremony on Sept. 30, with families and friends arriving at a Seattle-area hotel to see their own contributions sewn together with those of other donor families. One 13-square quilt included an evocative scene of a lake among evergreens, green-and-gold banners, and a simple heart on a background of green-and-red fabric. All of the squares held special meaning for family and friends of the donors and recipients.

The recognition ceremonies are held every year to thank, honor and comfort those who, in moments of their greatest personal tragedy, decide to help many others by donating their loved ones’ tissue and organs. More than 300 people attended the ceremony at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue ballroom, while nearly 100 donor friends and family gathered on Oct. 20 at Spokane’s Plymouth Congregational Church. The ceremonies are sponsored by the Northwest Tissue Services, the Northwest Lions Eye Bank and LifeCenter Northwest. Each featured different speakers from all walks of the donation experience, including donors’ closest relatives, transplant recipients, Tissue Services, LifeCenter Northwest and Lions Eye Bank representatives, a pastor and a critical care nurse.

At the Bellevue ceremony, each family stood when its loved one’s name was read, and was presented with a bag of tulip bulbs to plant in the donor’s memory. At the Spokane ceremony, families received certificates for maple seedlings and also had the opportunity to light candles.

The quilt project, which got underway last year, made its debut at the ceremonies this year. Also for the first time, families were invited to set up small memorabilia displays. Families browsed each others’ displays, stopping to admire framed portraits of donors and their families, along with donors’ favorite items, such as a hockey stick, a Navy hat and a collection of handmade baskets.

Andrea Vondra, whose two-year-old daughter Taylor was a donor, says, “Everybody else there is just like us. We’ve all been through the same thing.” Vondra felt lucky because, for the first time, her mother and grandmother were able to fly out from Illinois to attend the Bellevue ceremony with her, her husband Jeremy, and their two sons, Riley, three, and Mason, 21 months. It was the third ceremony for Vondra and her husband.

“In our busy lives,” she says, “it’s something set aside only for our daughter. We have about 1,000 things for the boys and ourselves, but this one day of the year is just for her.”