Solace in a Beat

This story was originally published in the Post-Dispatch on May 12, 2002.

Dee Holsapple had dealt with a lot since she lost her daughter Sherry in a car accident 14 months ago.

She had seen the accident unfold on Interstate 55 in her rearview mirror. At the hospital, she bore the tragic outcome with her husband, Gary. Together the two had agreed that Sherry's organs should be donated. Sherry had left four children, including a baby named Marissa. And since the accident, Dee had wrapped her life up in Marissa's. But on Thanksgiving Day when the telephone rang, she had to confront one more difficult circumstance.

The phone's caller ID screen displayed the name: HORNER. And though Dee had never seen nor met the person waiting for her to answer, she knew exactly who it was.

"Dee? It's Linda Horner."

"I know," Dee said.

"I just felt like I needed to call and wish you a Happy Thanksgiving," Linda said. "And to thank you for letting me have one."

What does a mother say to the woman who is living with her daughter's heart?

"Your baby duck"

The morning of March 6, 2001, began like most mornings for Dee and Sherry Holsapple. Dee went to Sherry's apartment in south St. Louis County, where Sherry lived with the kids: David, then 7, Christopher, 6, Joshua, 4, and Marissa, 7 months. Sherry, 28, had worked several days in a row at the nursing home where she was the activities assistant, and now, she finally had a day off.

"Let's celebrate," she said. She and Dee planned to take the children to Chuck E. Cheese's for the afternoon.

As Dee and Sherry discussed the plans, Sherry sat in Marissa's nursery, nursing her. When she finished, she put the baby down, sat in her mother's lap and wrapped her arms around her neck.

"You know, Mom," she said. "I'm still your baby duck. I love you."

"I know you're my baby duck," Dee said. "I love you."

Dee and Sherry's fancy with ducks took wing about 20 years ago when Sherry was about 8 years old. Sherry, a brash little tyke who once flipped a 250-pound man to get her orange belt in akido, had gotten in trouble -- for what Dee can't exactly remember, maybe for fighting with her brother Paul or not cleaning her room or just being too loud.

As a peace offering, Sherry bought a baby duck figurine covered with orange fuzz during a trip to the mall. She gave it to her mom, pouted out her bottom lip, and said, "But Mom, I'm just a baby duck."

Dee cracked up.

That baby duck stayed close to Dee, sitting on her desk at work. Through the years, Sherry gave Dee more baby ducks, some of which now sit in a curio cabinet in the Holsapples' living room.

While Sherry was growing up, Linda Horner was raising three boys with her husband, Ronnie, on a farm in Canton, Mo., about 150 miles north of St. Louis. One summer, they raised a flock of ducks.

Life for the Horners was happy and peaceful, through the weekend of Thanksgiving 1999. Linda cooked a big meal for her family, went to a craft fair and began getting ready for Christmas. But on the following Monday morning, she woke up wheezing. An EKG revealed a heart problem. A cardiologist found her heart was three times its normal size.

Immediately, Linda and Ronnie packed up for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Two days later, a blood clot went to her kidney. Linda almost died.

Doctors put a pacemaker and defibrillator in Linda's chest and told her she would need a heart transplant.

A look and a scream

On the March morning of Sherry's accident, Dee packed up Marissa and the older boys in her van, while Sherry took her car to pick up her youngest son at preschool. They both headed north on Interstate 55 toward Lindbergh Boulevard, Sherry following Dee.

And then, Dee looked in her rearview mirror.

Sherry had hit a piece of metal debris and lost control of her car. The car hit an abutment and flipped several times. Dee screamed.

Early the morning of March 8, at about 1:30 a.m., a phone call got Linda Horner out of bed.

It was the transplant team from St. Louis. They had a heart. The team gave her no details, but Linda knew that her new hope lay in someone else's loss.

Linda and Ronnie drove 20 miles to Quincy, Ill. where they were met at the hospital by an Air Evac team with a helicopter. It was a beautiful, clear night. The team was happy to see Linda and to make the trip.

As she lay on a stretcher, Linda began praying. "God, please be with this family who just lost a loved one. Whatever your will, let it be done."

Then a jolt.

Pilot Sam Cain fought to regain control of the helicopter as a shard of Plexiglas struck his forehead and a blast of wind whistled through the cockpit.

Linda felt something warm plop on her chest. She looked down and saw it was a duck. It was dead, its neck broken, But Linda held it close, finding comfort in its warmth as Cain brought his copter in for a safe landing.

Decision to donate

Having seen the accident, having doctors tell her that they couldn't save her child, having to deliver the news to her husband, Gary, and son Paul, the last thing Dee Holsapple wanted to contemplate was donating Sherry's organs. "My baby is already torn apart. You're going to tear her apart more?" she wanted to say.

But as the family kept vigil at Sherry's bedside, Dee remembered that she and Sherry talked about organ donation many times. She knew Sherry favored it.

Before the doctors took out Sherry's heart, kidneys and liver, the doctors let the family say their goodbyes. They hugged and kissed her and told her that they loved her.

After they left the room, somebody mentioned to the Holsapples that a helicopter had had a rough landing at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. It was bringing in a heart transplant patient and had been hit by a flock of ducks.

Gary and Dee looked at each other -- a sign from Sherry, they believed.

Striking parallels

Several hundred people turned out for Sherry's funeral to say goodbye, including several residents from the Manor Grove nursing home where she had worked. Sherry's family put several things in her casket -- pictures, roses, and, in Sherry's hands, the first baby duck -- the one with orange fuzz that Sherry had given to Dee.

In the following weeks, Sherry's grave at St. Paul church yard in Affton became the most decorated. Dee brought duck figurines, and angel figurines, and figurines with angels holding ducks. She poured bottles of the coffee drink Frappuccino into the ground at her grave because that was Sherry's favorite drink.

Linda, in the meantime, was recovering nicely from her surgery. She continued with her life as she knew it before, running into town for errands, picking up a Frappuccino, her favorite drink, at a corner gas station.

The unusual copter trip had given Linda a measure of fame. At the end of March, after Linda returned to the hospital for a checkup, television crews and reporters were on hand as the Air Evac team presented Linda with the duck that had crashed through the helicopter windshield. They had it stuffed with wings spread and its bill sticking through a piece of Plexiglas.

Afterward, she told a reporter that she had prayed every day for the person and the family who gave her a new heart.

"I love this person and their family, no matter their age, their race, their sex, their origin and no matter what type of life they lived," she said. "March 8 is another birthday, a beginning of my life."

* * *

Under most circumstances, organ recipients never meet the families of donors. Among 300 transplants that occurred last year in Missouri, Southern Illinois and Arkansas, Mid-America Transplant Services said it knew of only two such encounters. This was one of those cases.

One day in mid-May, as she waited for a biopsy on her heart at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, a nurse asked Linda whether she would like to meet Gary Holsapple. Gary is a technician at the hospital.

Without any hesitation, Linda said yes.

When the two met, they immediately embraced. Gary gave Linda two pictures -- one of Sherry and another of Dee, Gary and their four grandchildren.

As technicians prepped Linda for the biopsy, Linda, knowing what was coming next, asked Gary whether he wanted to leave. The doctors were going to stick a wire through a vein in her neck and grab a piece of the heart for tests. During the procedure, an image of the heart shows up on a monitor.

"No," Gary said. "I want to see my daughter's heart beat."

As the doctors worked, Linda and Gary could see Sherry's heart, Linda's heart, beating steadily, the valves opening and closing like lips making kisses.

Gary and Linda watched and wept.

Connecting by phone

Dee knew Gary had met Linda at the hospital. But she was having a tough time with the accident. After all, she saw it. And Sherry was her baby.

Dee stayed busy acting as a mother and guardian for Marissa, whose father left the family when she was a newborn. Marissa was already walking and babbling and kissing pictures of her mommy. Dee also doted on Sherry's three boys, who moved in with Sherry's first husband in St. Charles.

Dee, who for so long did not have the mental strength to meet Linda, was gradually warming up to the idea. Then the phone rang on Thanksgiving Day.

They spoke for an hour, and along with the sort of conversation you might imagine, they spoke of ducks. For Dee, the phone call validated that Linda's helicopter ride and Sherry's relationship with ducks was divine intervention -- heaven-sent.

Dee and Linda made arrangements to meet on Dec. 6, the next time Linda would be in town for tests.

As that day approached, Dee, who had been excited until then, suddenly panicked.

What if she resented Linda? What if Linda sensed that? How would she handle knowing that this stranger lived, and her daughter did not?

* * *

Both women felt nervous the morning of Linda's biopsy at the hospital. But when the two met, the connection was instantaneous.

After sharing hugs and tears, Ronnie and Linda and Gary and Dee went to the cafeteria, ordered lunch and sat at the table talking for three hours. As they talked, they discovered coincidences: Linda had three sons. Sherry had three sons. Linda has blond hair and blue eyes. Sherry had blond hair and blue eyes.

Dee brought Linda a ceramic angel ornament that Sherry had painted. Linda had brought Dee a figurine of an angel holding a heart. "Angel of my heart," it said on the bottom.

"You just don't realize what a heart you really have," Dee told Linda, "because Sherry would just give and give and give."

"You don't have to worry about your daughter's heart," Linda said. "I take care of it. I talk to your daughter every day. We have conversations."

* * *

As the weeks passed, the women talked on the phone and sent each other cards and gifts at Christmas. In January, when Linda and Ronnie came to St. Louis for another checkup, they met with Dee, Marissa and Gary and went to Sherry's grave.

Dee didn't know whether she should love Linda as a sister -- or a daughter. At 54, Dee is four years younger than Linda.

As Linda got to know Dee and as she learned more about Sherry, Linda began to mourn. How much pain could this family be going through? How could God take away such a giving woman?

"If I could give you Sherry's heart back, I would," she told Dee.

Dee responded firmly: "Sherry would have handpicked you."

A heartfelt moment

It was a brisk morning in late March, and Linda was getting her one-year checkup at Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital, where, in front of the main building, several ducks swam in an oblong pond.

Dee was there, as was toddler Marissa. Just the day before, Gary and Dee officially adopted her. It was a 15-minute ceremony in the family court in Clayton -- and after the judge made the adoption final, Dee burst into tears. It was a wonderful afternoon of celebrating with friends and family, but it was another step along the way of dealing with Sherry's death.

At the hospital, Dee and Marissa waited with Ronnie in the waiting room while Linda went in for tests. They did a heart catheterization, a biopsy, X-rays, blood tests and an echogram. Linda got a clean bill of health. This was a huge relief to everyone -- including Dee, who has said she would mourn all over again if something ever happened to Linda.

As the group got up to leave, Dee mentioned that Gary and friends had asked her: "Have you felt the heart beat yet?"

"I've told them, 'Well, no,'" Dee said.

"Well, you're going to now," Linda told Dee.

Before Dee could react, Linda took Dee's hand and placed it over her chest.

Dee closed her eyes, then smiled.

Linda's heart, Sherry's heart, beat strongly. It seemed to beat forever.