This year will mark ten years since you passed Dad!!! We still miss you like it was yesterday.
Life is truly getting harder. Mom and you would have celebrated 60 years of marriage this year. Your only Great-Grandchild, Bennett, ask who you are through pictures and knows about where your name is at the Memorial Wall at Lifeline of Ohio. (He mostly wants to know where you are. A deep question!)
Your five grandchildren are doing their own things in life, and none of us get together as much as we did when you were here!
“’I HAD A GOOD TIME! I LOVE YOU!’ Those are eight words I miss every day. Those words were always what he told me after he’d visited or after we’d had a family get-together. He’d call me on his flip phone, say these two sentences and hang up.
The evening he passed shocked us all. He and my mom had a great day together. They had a full day of activities with various family members that ended with a spur of the moment dinner at our house with my mom, dad, my brother and his wife and our children. We played cards, laughed hard and just enjoyed each other’s company. Looking back, I remember my dad sitting in our dining room and just looking around smiling at us all. It was as if he was taking it all in.
When he and mom got home, I knew he’d call quickly, so when my phone rang I remember answering it and beating him to his familiar words. I said, “I had a good time and I love you Dad.” He laughed, said it was wrong I beat him, then said he loved me too and hung up.
Not an hour after he hung up, my mom called very upset and said he had passed out in their bathroom and paramedics had been called.
That night still feels like a blur, and it is hard remembering it all. After the doctor told us my dad had passed, I ended up taking my mom home from the hospital to just be numb with her. My brother had to care for his family through the night, my husband stayed home to care for our daughters and grandbaby, and I just cried and hugged my mom until we were both exhausted. In the middle of the night her phone rang, it was Lifeline of Ohio.
The person from Lifeline of Ohio was very compassionate, patient and yet conveyed the importance of my dad’s gift of being a donor. Mom answered what questions she could and hung up not prepared at all for the days ahead and the loving notes, blanket and gratitude of my dad’s gift of life by donating his corneas and tissue.
After we had his Celebration of Life Memorial, I decided to become an Ambassador for Lifeline of Ohio to honor dad’s gifts and learn more about the process, the importance and to keep his story alive!
To most who knew him, Kenneth Edington was a jokester, an avid golfer, outdoorsman and hard worker. To his family, he was a proud man who loved my mom, me, my brother and our spouses along with his five grandchildren and one great-grandchild that was only nine-months-old when he became a donor. He taught us all how to laugh, be competitive and to play hard after working hard.
My mom and he met at the very location where the Lifeline of Ohio Dash for Donation is held – the old Central High School! Before his passing, they had just celebrated 51 years of marriage together.
There isn’t a day that passes that he isn’t thought of or talked about. Our grief can still be debilitating on certain days, but our memories of love and laughter keep us all going to prove there is meaning to life and especially to the gift of being a donor family.
Thank you to Lifeline of Ohio for making each of my family members feel your gratitude towards my dad’s gifts of life. We have been told over 25 individual lives have been saved from his donation of corneas and tissue.
Remember to have a good time in life and say I love you often! I’m blessed these were my last words with my dad.”
