My daughter Zeynah was an inquisitive, intuitive, kind and compassionate child. At 9 years old, she had a seemingly desperate desire to share everything she knew and had: the part of a library book she’d read and copied out word for word, her essential oils when someone hurt themselves at the park, a hand to someone who needed a steadying one. She was a giver.
I always knew my daughter was going to change lives. I just didn’t know she was going to give up her own to do so.
In March of this year, our family moved to London, Ontario. Those initial days in our new home were a blur of unpacking boxes and settling into our new surroundings, preparing to introduce Zeynah and her 7-year-old sister, Ziva, to a brand-new school. After their first day, I picked them up and we came home to have a snack.
Zeynah was an allergy child. For the last seven years, we had diligently managed her many food, environmental and contact allergies. We were always cautious about where and what she ate. But that day, after she ate a few pine nuts — something she had previously consumed without any reaction — Zeynah went into a severe and, ultimately fatal, anaphylactic shock. That, coupled with an asthma attack, led to cardiac arrest despite being administered antihistamine, inhalers and epinephrine.
I always knew my daughter was going to change lives. I just didn’t know she was going to give up her own to do so.
Multiple first responders worked tirelessly to get her pulse back. She was rushed to the pediatric critical care unit at our local hospital, where Zeynah was put on life support. For four days, her brilliant medical team worked around the clock to stabilize Zeynah and establish the extent of her neurological damage.
My husband and I had always believed, deep down, that there was more for her, and we prayed that this would not be the end. We had raised our girls with a sense of purpose — to recognize that everything they did would be in the way of serving humanity, that their lives were devoted to the service of God and His creation.
When we viewed Zeynah’s brain scan with her medical team, we saw that there was no brain activity whatsoever. She was subsequently declared brain dead. Our minds reeled. How could this be it?
It was then that her doctor asked us the question no parent wants to be asked: Would we consider donating our child’s organs?
We were surprised by the question — we had assumed that Zeynah’s illness throughout her life would make her ineligible for such a thing — but there was no hesitation in our answer. We immediately knew that Zeynah would want to help others and save lives.
In what seems like a blur now, we discussed which organs were viable for donation, logistics, timings and signed what seemed like hundreds of documents. The transplant coordinators went back and forth finding the perfect recipients who matched Zeynah’s blood type.
One of our coordinators told us that less than 1% of people who die in hospital are actually eligible to donate their organs, so even if you are a registered organ donor, the likelihood of you being able to donate your organs is quite low. But the need is staggering. Right now, more than 100,000 Americans and 4,400 Canadians await lifesaving organ transplants. Each year, more than 6,200 Americans and 250 Canadians die waiting.
On March 19, we walked our baby girl down to the operating theatre, where a team of surgeons gathered to take her departing gift of life back to their own patients in various parts of the country.
That day, Zeynah saved the lives of a 67-year-old man, a 27-year-old man, an 11-year-old boy, a 10-year-old girl and a baby girl by donating both her kidneys, liver, heart and pancreas. Her eyes gave the gift of sight to up to four people by using different parts of the eye.
When we feel grief, we remember that Zeynah’s almost-10-year-old heart now beats in the chest of another 10-year-old-girl.
This was not the first time Zeynah had given to others. From her first to her fourth birthday, she raised money for the nonprofit charity Humanity First’s Gift of Sight campaign, Water for Life campaign and funds for orphans and education. In total, she raised $2,700 for humanitarian relief. It made total sense to us that, even in death, she remained a giver.
Zeynah had always had an insatiable hunger to do more, to travel more, to see more, to give more. I didn’t understand why until now. She had a purpose in her short life, like we had always known, and saving these lives was part of that purpose.
People ask me how I cope with the tragic loss of my daughter. But I do not see Zeynah’s death as a “tragedy.” Traumatic — yes. Heartbreaking — yes, but not a tragedy.
How can it be a tragedy when as many as nine lives were changed for the better by the special gift that was and is our first-born child? When we feel grief, we remember that Zeynah’s almost-10-year-old heart now beats in the chest of another 10-year-old-girl.
Zeynah once wrote in one of her journals that if she could be any creature, real or mythical, she would be a phoenix. For her, they were magical, rising from the ashes with renewed life. This is how I choose to view her passing, as a rebirth of life through her selfless act of organ donation. Zeynah’s legacy lives on, not in tragedy, but in triumph; not in grief, but in gratitude.
