GIFT OF LIFE, GIFT OF LOVE
Father makes donation to Santa Claus Fund in memory of organ-giving son,
Matthew Wright was slight for his age, and soft-spoken.
Despite a gentle spirit, he’d argue sports with anyone down at the pub, where he loved to tip a pint with his father, Peter Wright. The two shared a love for Liverpool FC.
Unlike most of his teenage friends, Matthew preferred talking on the phone to texting.
And despite a learning disability that limited his reading comprehension, Matthew was proud to be a high school grad. At age 20, he was thinking he’d like to become a forklift operator and was thrilled to earn his driver’s licence. He had gotten out of the hospital just before Christmas. A bright future seemed possible, even likely.
But Matthew was born with a rare genetic disorder called maple syrup urine disease or MSUD. Because of it, his body was unable to process certain protein building blocks properly. Without careful management — and even despite careful management, as the Wright family learned — proteins and their byproducts build up. Those high levels of leucine, iso-leucine and valine are toxic to the body, causing brain swelling and seizures.
Matthew had spent much of his life in and out of hospital but that had only made him resilient, his father said.
He loved pond hockey and house league soccer despite being told he’d never be able to play sports. He happily covered the bland food of his restricted diet with ketchup. He had recently moved home to Whitby from Manitoulin Island, where his mom and sister live.
No one expected him to die at 20. But that’s what happened on Jan. 6, 2015, at Lakeridge Health hospital in Oshawa.
“He was only in the hospital a couple of hours when they called a code blue,” said Wright, 61, who works in insurance. “They took him to the intensive care unit and he never did wake up.
“He’d fought many battles with his MSUD and won them all, except this last one.”
As a child Matthew would remind himself he was a lot better off than some of the other children at Sick Kids. He’d once made the comment it would be “cool” to save a life after he died. So when he did die, his parents donated his organs to save others. A heart, two kidneys, both lungs and a pancreas. The Wright family was later informed Matthew’s donation helped four people.
“No parent should have to bury their child but we get a small consolation knowing his organs did save four people’s lives and that really helps,” Wright said.
Wright and wife Marilyn Burbidge decided to give to the Santa Claus Fund in Matthew’s name as well.
Each year the charity, which was founded in 1906 by Toronto Star publisher Joseph Atkinson, delivers gifts to 45,000 underprivileged children in the city.
“He was a kind soul and always willing to help and give to others even after he passed,” Wright wrote in an email when making a recent donation.
He said he’d often read the Star’s annual Santa Claus Fund articles to Matthew and his sister Rebecca “to remind the kids that Christmas wasn’t about getting all sorts of presents. It was about helping others.”
“I was thinking of Matthew when the paper happened to be turned to that page where there was a story. I don’t know whether Matthew plunked the idea in my mind.”
On the first anniversary of Matthew’s death this January, Wright and Burbidge received a letter through the Gift of Life organ donation agency.
It was from the father of the anonymous child who received Matthew’s heart, thanking the family for Matthew’s life. The father also said that though he doesn’t drink beer, he felt compelled one day to pull into a pub for a pint of ale.
He had wanted, the letter-writer said, to understand a little about Matthew — whose heart had saved his son. If you have benefitted from the Santa Claus Fund or have a story to tell, please email santaclausfund@thestar.ca.