A life of generosity
Colleen was an avid reader, secretly a great artist and very creative. She would make Barbie clothes and play pretend with her granddaughter for hours, never getting bored.
When Holley was growing up, her favorite place to visit was her local library. Holley and her mom loved to walk to the library in the fall, pretending they were the characters in Holley’s favorite book, Say It!
Not only was Colleen imaginative and generous, but she was also intuitive and kind.
“She would read up on not only current events, but things that she knew mattered to people,” Holley said. “She was always doing that. Really staying abreast and involved in the things that she knew were important to those around her.”
The gifts of life & sight
“It makes my heart sing to know that she was able to do, in her death, for another family what someone else did for us – give a new lease on life,” Holley said. “She often talked about how strange it was to be a donor recipient; to walk each day knowing you carried another part of someone within you and I am honored to know that someone walks today with that same gift because of my mom and her stunning blue eyes.”
For Colleen, the liver transplant she received was a second chance at life, but recovery wasn’t easy. Colleen suffered additional health issues after the surgery and had to relearn how to write.
But Colleen fought hard. She knew that she had something worth fighting for.
“But she would have told you that her whole drive to get better, to go through rehab, to do everything she had to do was because she knew she was going to meet her granddaughter,” Holley said. “She used to say my daughter was her guardian angel.”
Cherished family traditions & memories
The liver transplant gave Colleen 16 more years with her family—years filled with cherished memories.
“We started a tradition where every year at Christmas we would bake sugar cookies,” she said. “We all had matching embroidered aprons that say, ‘the cookie girls’ and there's a certain snowman that we had to have our picture taken with every year.”
Colleen’s legacy continues to live on through her family.
“At Christmas, we still made our cookies, and we put her apron out, so, it was there in memory,” Holley said. “She is so much of who I am. She's so much of who my daughter is. I just want to make her proud.”
Though Colleen cherished her second chance at life, she always struggled with the knowledge that her gift of life came from the loss of someone else.
“She struggled with knowing that her gift of life cost another family,” Holley said. “So that's one of the reasons she was very, very much an advocate and wanted to make sure that people knew and understood this incredible sacrifice.”
Colleen lived her life with that in mind, capturing the beauty of each day in the pages of her journals. After she passed, Holley and her father discovered a collection of journals where each entry began with, “It’s a new day, I’m alive.”
Every day, Colleen would write about something that brought her joy—whether it was seeing a cardinal or celebrating her granddaughter’s first day of school.
“It was overwhelming to find those,” Holley said. “To see how much she valued each day she was given.”
A legacy of love: Colleen’s message for the future
If Holley could speak to her mother’s cornea recipient, she would ask them to pay it forward through donation education and to remember that everything is bigger than yourself.
“Donation seems morbid and weird, but if you're a family who's impacted, it is everything,” she said. “It is the biggest life changer on the face of this earth. So, I would just say to make sure to tell your story and enjoy every day. Enjoy every sunset and every leaf you get to see, and the faces of your loved ones. Just enjoy it.”
As Holley reflects on her mother’s life, one quote resonates with her deeply—a framed passage from a Mary Oliver poem that hangs in her office: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Colleen lived hers fully, both as a recipient of life-saving generosity and as a giver of sight to someone in need.
“At least once a day, I think, ‘It's a new day, I'm alive, so what am I going to do with it?’” Holley said.
