Dianna Maria Lopez
A Loving sister, daughter, granddaughter, niece, and friend to many.
Dianna could light up even the darkest of rooms with her beautiful smile and spunky attitude. She was on the Lake City high school soccer team and graduated in June of 2019. ..She absolutely loved her family and friends, music, children (especially her cousin’s kids) and was a girly girl. She loved her long beautiful brown hair, but didn’t wear makeup. She always said she was too pretty for it, ..and she was. On August 30th 2019, Dianna turned 18 years old, just 3 and a half months before God would welcome her into the gates of Heaven. It was December 11th 2019 when our family got the dreaded call that any donor family knows all too well. Our beautiful Dianna was is a car accident, and was on life support. ..Family and friends gathered and prayed and prayed that she would make it through. The following day however, after every test that could have possibly been done, Dianna was pronounced brain dead, and our hearts were shattered. Life as we all knew it, changed in an instant.
Mark 11:24 says “Therefor I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours”. …We prayed for God to bring life back to her body, and even though we didn’t see it at the time through the sorrow and the grief and our loss, He did just that. ..Dianna was always a giver, and she had one last gift to give, the gift of life, and to not just one person but many. God brought life back into her body, through her organ donations to those that received a miracle. Dianna was the first organ donor after the transfer of Carolina Hospital System to MUSC in Florence SC.
Fast forward to the end of August, 2024. Ceyrena Tiasyiah Graham, another child of our family & cousin to Dianna’s heart began to fail her at just 23 years old. Ceyrena was born with an enlarged heart and was told she would never leave the hospital without a heart transplant. At 6 weeks old at MUSC children’s hospital in Charleston, Ceyrena beat the odds, and was able to come home. ..When her heart began to fail just 8 months ago, we knew in our hearts what she was going to need to survive,… a heart transplant. It was an odd feeling to know that we would now be on the opposite side of an organ transplant and what sacrifice would have to be made in order for Ceyrena to live. We knew that a family, like all of ours, would lose someone they loved to bring this miracle to Ceyrena and to our family. Ceyrena is an absolute joy in our lives and we could not bear the thought of losing another child of our family. She loves Prince, more than anyone else on planet earth, loves the color purple (obviously), and loves her YouTube and listening to music and making rubber band bracelets for everyone she knows and loves.. She brings so much love, laughter, and sassiness to our lives.
It was September 11th, 2024 that we got the call. A heart that matched her blood type was to be going through the approval process, and if it passed, she would be prepped for surgery later that night. The heart was approved and Ceyrena was prepped. In the time while waiting for a miracle, you forget that once the time has come, they will either come out of that surgery, or they will not. Everything happens very quickly once a donor is matched with a recipient, and again we prayed, not only for our family, but also for the donor’s. … At 4 am the lead surgeon came out to the waiting room to inform us that the surgery went great and that Ceyrena was gifted the ultimate gift of life. She is now 8 months out from her transplant, with no signs of rejection. She can walk and breathe better and has a second chance at life. Our family, a second chance at life with Ceyrena in it.
As a family of both an organ donor, and recipient, we want to say thank you to every donor and family of from the bottom of our hearts, for the gift you and your loved ones have blessed not only our family with, …but all the families whose lives your loves ones touched & gave a second chance to. We could not truly understand the magnitude of the gift Dianna gave to those that received her organs until we were on the other side of donation, and we can assure you, they brought hope, second chances, and changed lives, even from heaven.
Proverbs 18:16 says:
“A gift opens the way and ushers the giver into the presence of the great.”
With so much love from our family to all of yours,
Thank you for your greatest sacrifice to those in need of a miracle.
