Nicholas Peters, 25, died in a car accident nearly two years ago and her mother, Maria Clark, decided almost immediately that she wanted to breathe new life into her body through an organ donation. “I said, ‘We can’t bury all this magic, we have to share it,'” the woman told the portal.good morning america“.
“He was always a social person, helping everyone and going out of his way to make sure you knew you were special,” added the Madisonville, Louisiana woman.
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After talking to her family about it, Maria donated her son’s organs to people across the country, unaware that one of them was less than a three-hour drive away.
In September 2020, in nearby New Iberia, LouisianaJean Paul Marceaux, 14, was waiting for the opportunity to have his second heart transplant.
The boy suffered from a condition called cardiomyopathy, which causes his heart to pump blood at a slower rate than normal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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His first transplant took ten years before it began to fail. The minor’s mother, Candance Armstrong, said he had to be hospitalized again until June 2020 until he received the call they were waiting for.
“It’s such a dichotomy. You expect it because it will sustain your child’s life, but you know what it is (…) I know another mother is going through what I’ve been praying for not to happen to me. It’s a very unusual circumstance,” Armstrong said.
Candance said they hadn’t heard from the family who donated their son’s first heart, but less than a year after the second transplant, they received a letter from Maria Clark. “For Jean Paul to actually meet a person and connect with him and the family was the first time that’s happened to us,” he added.
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Both mothers made contact immediately and began to correspond regularly. Clark recalls once receiving a video of Jean Paul dancing at her prom and saying, “This is Nick. He gets it, this is Nick.”
The families arranged to meet and had to wait despite the waiting time caused by the pandemic COVID-19On May 14, 2022, they were able to hug for the first time. “He came in and just hugged me. He gave me a big hug, as did Nick,” Clark said. “And then hearing the heartbeat, it was so strong and so full of life.”
“It came through the stethoscope so loudly it just banged like a drum,” he said of Jean Paul’s heartbeat. “I was so attached to him because he looked so much like Nick.”
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Armstrong says he considers Clark, his children and grandchildren a part of his “forever” family and even has photos of Nicholas in some corners of the house, including Jean Paul’s room.
Clark said that while she misses her son “every day,” she finds comfort in knowing he’s now helping so many other people live healthy lives. “All I know is that he’s up in heaven, dancing and looking down and saying, ‘Well done,'” he added.