- Guest post by Reg Green, donor father
When Roxanna Green, the mother of Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl who was killed in the Gabby Giffords shooting rampage, takes her honored place in the Rose Parade on Jan. 2, she will be among a group of people who feel more keenly than anyone else the special blend of anguish and inspiration that her family bequeathed.
There was no shortage of anguish. She remembers, as in a nightmare, her daughter covered with a sheet and she, beside her, kissing her face and stroking her feet, willing her to live.
A rendering of the 2012 Donate Life Rose Parade Float, "...One More Day."
But, even as she and her husband, John, grappled with the enormity of their loss, they found the strength to make a decision to donate her corneas, restoring the sight of two people for whom there was no other cure. The child, though born on one day of indiscriminate killing, Sept. 11, 2001 and dying on another, gave the nation a reason to believe that selflessness can overcome senselessness.
Yet the loss was profound. Christina-Taylor balanced good works with good grades and was the only girl on her Little League team, perhaps not surprisingly, as her father is a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In the parade Roxanna will be on the Donate Life float with people – and portraits of people — whose lives, though superficially very different, have much in common with hers. One of those portraits, called floragraphs because they are made entirely of natural materials, is of 21-year-old Jeremy Doyle of Chillicothe, whose motorcycle was knocked over by a car that ran a red light on the day he was going to propose to his girl friend. Just before the accident, Jeremy had made separate visits to his mother, stepfather and sister to tell them the news.
Read more: http://www.lifelineofohio.org/2011/12/heroes-honored-on-donate-life-float/
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