At age 15, Katie Vaudrey wrote, “I want to leave ripples in the lives I leave behind.”
She lived her life with this kind of intentionality. Eye, organ and tissue donation is one of the many ways Katie’s ripples continue in the lives she left behind.
As a true middle child with two older and two younger siblings, Katie was full of joy, empathy and encouragement for others. She had a creative mind and saw beauty in the world.
Katie wanted to be a studio artist, creating and selling her art. It was through art she expressed the feelings and emotions of a teenage girl.
“She had already gotten to participate in a professional show in downtown Chicago, even though she was not old enough to drink and I had to get her in there somehow because it was a big, fancy event,” September Vaudrey, Katie’s mom, said.
Her eyes crinkle with laughter as she recalls the memory.
The Vaudrey family loves playing games together, including Pictionary, which was Katie’s specialty. September’s husband, Scott, would create silly, random clues like “scuba diving with a jar of mayonnaise as a king.” That would stump the average person, but not Katie.
“One of our favorite little home videos is her drawing a clue like that, and of course she's so dang good that we guessed it,” September said.
Even with her early success and being quite prolific in the art world, above all else, Katie loved people. It was her love of life that inspired her to become an eye, organ and tissue donor as soon as she got her driver’s license.
“She had a unique ability to see you and to speak into what your soul needed to hear in the moment.”
Giving the greatest gifts
The summer after her freshman year of college, Katie was on her way to her first shift at a new job. A ruptured brain aneurysm caused her to pass out and crash her car. She was revived at the scene but declared brain dead later that night. Katie was only 19 years old.
Her parents, September and Scott, were asked to consent to Katie being a donor. For the Vaudreys, saying yes to donation didn’t require much thought. Scott is an emergency-medicine physician and had often had to ask that difficult question to other families facing this situation.
“We had never lost a loved one suddenly, but one of the ironic, beautiful things that I love about donation isn't just the way that it helps the recipient families,” September said. “I had no idea what a blessing it would be for us as the donor family.”
"Instead of us learning that this amazing young woman was brain dead and was not coming back—instead of saying goodbye right then in a rush—donation gave us this 30-hour, sacred goodbye,” she said. "I will never forget those hours with Katie.”
September never left her daughter’s side during those 30 hours. Each of Katie’s siblings and her dad got to have their own private goodbyes. Even 16 years later, September is still grateful that they had that extra time with Katie.
“It allows you the space and the margin to create an experience of a beautiful goodbye, which I'll be eternally grateful for,” September said.
Katie’s decision changed the lives of eight people through eye, organ and tissue donation, including two cornea recipients in Illinois. When September learned of this outcome, she jumped at the chance to participate in the Eversight correspondence program and wrote Katie’s recipients a heartfelt letter.
She checked her mailbox every day for months, waiting to hear how Katie’s donation changed lives. Eventually she heard from two recipients: Sandy, who received Katie’s liver, and Evelin, a young single mom who received one of Katie’s corneas, and they were able to meet in person.
“To meet Evelin and to be able to look in her eyes and to realize, ‘Oh my gosh, that's Katie's cornea!’—to actually be that close to a living part of my daughter—was unbelievable. What a joy,” September said.
All these years later, September and Evelin are still Facebook friends and September enjoys watching her see the world.
“I think she’s in Europe right now, where she's seeing all the things that Katie would have loved to see,” she said. “Katie had planned to go to Italy the following spring to study a semester abroad, to study art in Florence, so, to know that Evelin is taking Katie's cornea on a little road trip, it gives me tremendous joy.”
Simple, everyday moments carry Katie’s legacy
Every summer, September would take each of her kids back-to-school shopping. But before her senior year of high school, Katie boldly announced that she would be the one to take her little brother, Sam, school shopping instead. September was all in.
Sam was going into his freshman year of high school. It was bittersweet for September to give up this opportunity, but she knew what it would mean to them. Several hours later, the siblings returned home with bags of clothes and, of course, Katie made Sam model each outfit for the family.
“For Sam, it’s such a precious memory—and for me, to see Katie building into the life of a sibling, those moments as parents, they're just the best,” September said. “One of the deepest losses from Katie’s passing was for her siblings.”
Like Katie wrote, she wanted to leave ripples in the lives of others—and through donation, she was able to do just that. Not only was Katie a donor, but she was also passionate about donating blood regularly—and recruiting family and friends to do the same.
“When you lose a loved one, especially in an unexpected way, you have a choice,” September said. “Although you can't bring your loved one back—you can’t undo the car accident or whatever it was that took their life tragically and prematurely—but you get to decide, ‘Am I going to choose loss only, or am I going to choose loss plus gain for some other people?’ Like, why would we not want to choose loss plus gain?”
One of the ways the Vaudrey family keeps Katie’s legacy alive is by donating to charities they think she would have supported with the money they would spend on her Christmas gifts. Every year, the family takes turns choosing which charities to donate to, and then fills her stocking with the rolled-up donation receipts.
September wrote a book about her grief journey: Colors of Goodbye: A Memoir of Holding On, Letting Go, and Reclaiming Joy in the Wake of Loss. She also has gotten involved in a grief workshop that supports about 120 people two or three times a year, helping those struggling with grief and the emotions that come with losing a loved one.
“Katie's death will never make sense to me, this side of eternity,” she said. “But until then, I want to be a good steward of the pain that her death has brought me. I do that by talking to others about grief and helping them, inviting them to navigate their grief in healthy ways.”
“I used to think that sorrow was just a negative emotion, but what I've come to believe now is that joy and sorrow are two sides of the same coin.”
September believes donation gives the gift of a gentler goodbye.
“You can sign your donor registry for the sake of those recipients, but I would say do it also for the sake of the people who love you,” she said. "Because they now have a story with a little bit more beauty as they think about you and your life, and what you contributed on this earth.”
By registering your decision to be an eye, organ and tissue donor, you are helping to save lives and giving hope to those in need. One donor can save and heal more than 75 lives.
