Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Jacob if I wa my so inside beatin
approach saves lives. I hope this campaign is successful.”
Becky tells of the moment she saw Jacob in the flesh for the first time at her wedding last Friday. They had previously exchanged letters and Facebook messages but had never met in person.
She says “everything was normal” as her wedding got under way, with no sign of the surprise that was to come.
“I walked down the aisle with my dad and he handed me over to Kelly,” she says. “That was all normal.”
But then, Kelly, 44, who had secretly planned for Jacob to surprise his wifeto-be, suddenly dropped her hand.
“He started walking back down the aisle, towards the crowd,” Becky says. “I was like, ‘What are you doing? We’re getting married right now!’”
Addressing the guests, the groom spoke about Triston, saying he and Becky had saved a seat for the teenager, who died in October 2015.
He told how Triston had joined the organ donor register aged 14 and donated his heart, lungs, kidney, liver, and pancreas. He then revealed one of the recipients was at the ceremony... and that was when he introduced Jacob.
“I just lost it,” Becky says. “If my brother-in-law hadn’t been holding my hand, I would’ve fallen down. I squealed like a little girl, jumped up and down.”
It was captured on camera by Amber Lanphier, of wedding photographers Love Adventured, who said guests were “moved”.
The photos show Becky gasping as she is introduced to Jacob, then beaming widely and hugging him before listening to her son’s heartbeat inside his chest.
Becky says: “It was amazing. Jacob asked me if I wanted to hear his heart. It was beating so strong. I was saying, ‘This is so amazing, that’s Triston’s heart’. It was the most amazing moment of my life. I threw my arms around Jacob and said it was the greatest gift in the world.” Becky of Wasilla, Alaska, could not believe Kelly had managed to keep the surprise from her. “I’m the girl who secretly unwraps all the Christmas presents under the tree and puts them back,” she says. “So for him to pull this off was just incredible.” She has since spent more time with Jacob, from San Di California. She says: “A lot of hea happened this week. We’ll keep in to We have a bond for life.”
An obituary in Alaska newspaper Frontiersman says: “On Novembe 1995, Triston ‘Shorty’ Taylor Green c screaming into the world. On Octo 18 2015, Shorty peacefully slipped a from us. And that was about the thing he did peacefully.”
The affectionate tribute also said after graduation from high schoo spent some time in Alaska’s far no “wrestling polar bears and swimmin the Arctic Ocean”.
It went on to say: “He selfle donated the gift of life to five stran through organ donation.
“It is no surprise that everyone w knew him said he was their best fri On that morning, five people gain new best friend. And he wouldn’t h had it any other way.”
Jacob was born with hypoplastic heart syndrome – where the left sid the heart does not form correctly –