From inside the house, she heard the fearful sound of shattering glass and crushing steel. The car accident happened no more than 200 yards from their home on March 20, 1997. Pencie was by her daughter Johnna’s side in minutes. The paramedics arrived shortly after. Sadly, it was already too late, although no one but God knew that.
Pencie Zamazal has never been able to forget that terrible night, but with her husband John by her side, this couple have, by any measure, made a success of their lives. They have raised two other children, Honey and Chad, and have five grandchildren. Now they have retired to East Texas and are looking forward to the excitement of running a cattle ranch and many happy visits with their grandchildren.
But before they flew out from Dhahran last month, Pencie felt there was one more thing she needed to do. She wanted to talk about Johnna’s gift once again.
“I’ve been having a difficult time giving this life up and thinking that I am leaving Johnna here when I know that in my mind that’s not true. But it’s just the way I’ve felt,” said Pencie. “It has been ten years since the accident. It’s been a hard ten years, but times are easier now than they were even really three years ago. Despite everything that has happened to us, I have loved living in the Kingdom and leaving is wrenching.”
Losing a child is always a tragedy. Johnna was just 15 that night in 1997. Her mother describes the teenager as “probably one of the biggest blessings God has given anybody.” Johnna always had a ready smile for everyone. After her death it was the first thing people remembered about her.
But we’re getting too far ahead in our story. Before Pencie could think of her daughter’s smile again there was enormous pain to journey through. Johnna’s father was away at work the night of the accident, so Pencie was the one who spent those first hours in the hospital waiting for word of their child’s condition. She knew little at first, except that their daughter had been put on a ventilator to help her breath. Very early in the morning the doctors came to tell Pencie that Johnna’s status was grave. Pencie telephoned John and in a few hours he was at the hospital. Johnna’s sister Honey arrived later that day.
The family stood vigil at Johnna’s bedside in the intensive care unit. It was quite surreal because Johnna had sustained no visible injuries in the car crash except for a small cut above her nose. But there she was in the bed, very still, hooked up to so many machines. In the early days after the accident, the doctors seemed hopeful. Although Johnna had yet to regain consciousness, there was talk of eventually shifting her to a rehabilitation center.
Suddenly on the morning of March 28, Johnna’s condition worsened. Her blood pressure increased dramatically and her brain began swelling. A short while later doctors told the family that Johnna had “coned;” her brain stem had suffered extensive damage. Tests later in the day confirmed that brain death had occurred.
“It was after this that a nurse, Loraine, approached us,” said Pencie. “At that time I couldn’t comprehend that Johnna was gone because she was there and breathing. Yes, it was with a breathing machine but our daughter was still warm, hardly scratched from the accident and in the bed before our eyes. Loraine asked us if we would be willing to donate Johnna’s organs for transplant. I couldn’t make the decision.”
Instead, that choice was left to Johnna’s father and sister.
“The nurse asked us if we would consider it and if we had talked about it. We hadn’t,” John said. “It took us just about 30 seconds to decide to donate Johnna’s organs once Honey and I sat down to discuss it. We thought Johnna would want to do this. At that time I really didn’t care about the good this was going to do for other people. I was just thinking that this was something that Johnna would have wanted.”
He continued, “Months later, when we went through the files on Johnna’s computer, we found a questionnaire that she’d had to fill out with her name and address and other information. Then on the form there was a question asking ‘Would you like to be a donor?’ She had checked, ‘yes.’ That let us know for a fact that we had made the right choice.”
The next two days seemed to pass in slow motion. In total shock and suffering bottomless grief, the family huddled around Johnna’s bed while doctors in Riyadh and Dhahran searched for matching recipients for her organs. At that time in the Kingdom there was no list of donors and no well established scenario for the harvesting of the organs. Finally, at noon on Sunday, March 30 the surgery which would result in the transplants began.
“We know that Johnna’s heart, kidneys, liver and lungs were transplanted to others,” said Pencie. “At that time we thought that we had not donated her corneas, but later we were told that we had. I would recommend that others make the same choice that we did. It is such a heartbreaking decision but what other choice do you have?”
The Zamazals were never told exactly who had received the organs and they had not put limitations on their donation in anyway. They did ask that if possible, the organs would be donated to girls who would hopefully gain years of life from the gift.
“I think it is very important that people sit down and talk about organ donation as a family — children and all,” said Pencie, with John nodding his head in agreement. “Once children are old enough to make up their own mind, they should be consulted about their wishes in regards to organ donation.”
When asked if they would like to know who had received their daughter’s organs, John and Pencie hesitated before answering.
“I don’t think we would want to meet the recipients or even know their names. We do wish that it were possible though to know that the people who received Johnna’s organs were healthy and enjoying life,” Pencie replied. “I look at every person I pass some days and I wonder if any of them are the ones carrying a small part of Johnna inside.”
With tears in her eyes Pencie paused for a moment to compose herself, and then added, “The time has come now for us to move on. I won’t look at this move as if we’re leaving Johnna. Instead, I will always believe that we created hope here and that this hope forever lives on.”
