Live On: Suzie's Story

On June 28th, 2019, Josh Weiland received a call one never wants to get. His father called to tell him that his mother was being transported to the hospital for what was likely a stroke. When Josh arrived, he quickly learned that it was indeed a stroke and unfortunately, the type that didn’t have a promising outcome. It was at that moment that his dad mentioned that she wanted to be an organ donor.
Weiland wasn’t a stranger to donation. In his career as a pilot, he had transported patients to receive their transplants. But never he never thought he would be involved so personally with that reality.
“But now the script was flipped as you would say maybe. And, we were in that seat.”
Suzie loved her family, especially her grandkids. She loved being out on the lake, tubing, and even water skiing. With the importance of family at her core, spending time together was such a gift to everyone.
“What surprised me about mom’s ability to be a donor: First of all, she was 66. I thought, well, she’s a Nana and she’s an older lady. There’s got to be some things that maybe aren’t as usable.
The second thing is when I was young, so many, many years ago, my mom would smoke. So I was like, well, her lungs are out of the picture. With those two things in mind, I thought, well, you know, maybe they’ll be a couple of the organs that are usable.”
But as it turns out, all of them were viable with the exception of her heart. When the surgeon talked about her lungs, they said it was the best set of lungs they had seen on a 66-year-old, which Josh recalls as not surprising considering she was very boisterous and loved to sing.
“I guess it just put all of those myths to bed. For me, I think it’s the ultimate gift. I think that we come into the world with nothing, and we leave with nothing. And so for any of us to have the ability to extend someone’s life in that fashion is the best gift that we can that we can truly give. There are people today who are alive because of my mom. That’s incredible.”