Kidney donor’s mom, recipient get similar tattoos to honor memory.
Kidney donor’s mom, recipient get surprisingly similar tattoos to honor his memory
As JeVonie Tyars neared the oneyear anniversary of receiving a lifesaving kidney, he decided to honor the memory of his donor with a tattoo.
JeVonie’s left forearm was inked with a heartbeat lifeline that goes flat and then resumes following a gift bow on the line. It includes the date of the transplant, July 12, 2016, at Froedtert Hospital and a shoutout saying, “Thanks, Ryan.”
The two men never met. Ryan Shwonek died July 10, 2016, after a skateboard accident at his friends’ wedding reception at Naga-Waukee Park. The fall severed his brain stem. He was 31.
His kidneys, heart, liver, eyes, lungs and other tissue were harvested for transplants and research. Half a dozen people are walking around with those organs now.
Ryan’s mom, Kim Winger, of Oconomowoc, reached out to the recipients through the Wisconsin Donor Network. She did not know any of their names, and she was not allowed to include her family’s last name or other identifying information. But her letters mentioned first names, and she included a photo of Ryan.
JeVonie, who is 28, living in Grafton and working as a trainer for wireless salespeople, received the note and photo and decided to do some detective work. Knowing the donor’s death was in July 2016, he bypassed the donor network, found Ryan’s death notice online and then reached out to Kim on Facebook in March 2017.
“I said, ‘I have your son’s kidney ... I would love for us all to meet.’ ”
Kim wrote back that she was glad he found her. They began communicating via Facebook messages and by phone.
JeVonie shared how his kidneys started going bad when he was 17 and that he was on years of dialysis. Kim told him how she and her husband, Rich, own Winger’s Tap in Oconomowoc. And, of course, she talked about the upbeat artistic son they lost and how he loved his job at a marina.
But Kim never mentioned or
showed JeVonie the tattoo she got about six weeks after Ryan’s death. It’s on her chest, right over her heart.
The design she chose is Ryan’s name flowing into a heartbeat lifeline. And not just any lifeline. It’s the final printout from the monitor in use when he was taken off life support. A nurse gave it to Kim.
“It’s Ryan’s real heartbeat,” Kim said.
Where the line flattens, Kim added a diamond. This was to partially honor a request Ryan had made to turn his human remains into a diamond if he should ever die. Ryan got a thrill out of cheating death by skydiving, speed and just living large.
JeVonie did not tell Kim about the tattoo he had planned, but when it was finished he shared it with her on Facebook. She was amazed at the similar design they both had picked.
Then she showed JeVonie a photo of her tattoo for the first time. “It gives me goosebumps,” he said. “It’s crazy that we both thought of the same thing.”
The two finally met in person last November, along with lots of other family members, including Kim’s husband and daughters and JeVonie’s mother, siblings, grandparents and other relatives. They all were there to hear JeVonie share his story at a medical conference, and then everyone went to Olive Garden.
Earlier this month, JeVonie and Kim both spoke at an organ donor awareness event. They have become friends. JeVonie is the only recipient of her son’s organs that Kim has met in person so far.
She is touched by his tattoo and sometimes feels JeVonie was handpicked by her son from the great beyond.
“What an amazing gift JeVonie gave us,” Kim said. “He really gets it. He really understands that somebody actually died and there are people who loved that person and are so happy that he was able to help somebody like JeVonie.”