Max’s gift: Grief, love, and the legacy of organ donation

Leah wants to talk about Max. The interview about organ and tissue donation for national awareness week is almost over, but Leah wants to tell me more about her little boy. She lives out her love for the child she misses immeasurably by telling me how smart he was, that he had a curious mind, loved science, learning and sharing things he discovered. 

“It's a gift to talk about your child who is no longer here because we don't get to create any new memories with our child,” Leah says “Max only made memories with us up until the day he died. To be able to bring him forward in a way that illustrates how much he mattered, is a gift in the pile of sadness.”

Max was just five years old when he set out with his grandmother on a spring day in 2021 to pick up gardening supplies. Tragically, they were in a car accident. His grandmother was injured, and while Max was alive on arrival at IWK Health, he was brain dead as a result of the accident. 

Amid overwhelming heartbreak, Max’s parents Leah Oickle and Devin Thomas, made a choice that would forever change the lives of others.

Through the Legacy of Life Organ Donation Program, Max became an organ and tissue donor. His two kidneys, liver, two heart valves and two corneas offered renewed health and enhanced the lives of seven other people.

It’s Leah and Devin’s hope that talking about organ and tissue donation will support others to consider donating in the face of overwhelming grief and loss.

“It may hurt, and it may bring back things, but it's worth talking about. It's important to talk about organ donation,” says Leah, who reiterates that, “any opportunity to speak about your child, who is no longer here, is a gift.” 

Devin says they’ve never shied away from talking about the donation because it’s been part of their healing journey, and it makes sense for them to talk about it.

Leah and Devin requested Max become a donor as soon as it became clear he wasn’t going to come back from the accident.

“I'm the one who said, ‘what about donation?’ The doctors were like, ‘whoa, we’re not there yet.’ I went forward pretty quickly, and they were probably taken aback,” Leah says, “but it was just my intellectual mind trying to make sense of what we were dealing with.”

There was never any question about donation and they both believe it was something Max would definitely have wanted, as well.

“If he could have been there, talking to us somehow, he would have said ‘yes, mommy, do it. I can help other kids.'” Even though he was an only child, Leah says, “Max was really good at sharing, and he would have been proud. He would have been right on board.”

Devin says Max will always be a hero in his eyes. “I’m so proud of him. While it was our decision, and we made it on his behalf, he’s the one who saved some people. He’s the one who made a difference, and if the tragedy of his death can help someone else's loved one, he deserves to be called a hero.”

The couple were told that because of the temporary suspension of inter-provincial transplant programs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Max could only donate a limited range of organs and tissues.

That meant Max couldn’t donate his heart or lungs. 

 “I wish somebody had been able to get his heart because he had a beautiful heart,” Leah says with obvious pride. “He was a funny little kid. Our boy had the best laugh. It took over his whole body and was infectious.”

A team of doctors were pulled together quickly to save Max’s organs and tissues despite the pandemic restrictions. Although Leah and Devin are confident it was the right decision for them, Leah admits it’s still an incredibly hard thing to do.

“It still hurts,” Leah admits “because as a parent, you want your child to have the organs, you want your child to be intact. You want your child to be here. But in that moment, when that’s no longer an option, you're trying to grasp at something hopeful.”

As a healthcare social worker, who spent time in nephrology doing assessments for kidney recipients, Leah had seen the other side of the donation story. She’d watched patients and families light up with hope when they finally got the call they were going to receive a new organ, and the value of organ donation stayed with her. 

“I never really thought about the family members of the people who donated the organs,” she reflected. “That's the funny thing. I never gave that much thought because I was focused on the people who were going to go on living.”

When they were told Max wouldn’t recover, she shifted her focus. “I detached from that part and went straight to, ‘What’s the good thing?’ Thinking about that person waiting for their call allowed me to separate it out a bit in my heart and mind.”

“I could relate to the people on the other end, the ones saying, ‘I got the call!’. I'd heard that voice, the voice of excitement and utter gratitude that they were going to get a new kidney.”

Leah and Devin want people to know that when tragedy has shattered your life, if it aligns with your values, organ donation can be a little light in the darkest time. 

“I would tell other parents that their baby could do something good in the world after they're gone, and if nothing else, part of their child could live on in other people, and that's a good thing. They aren’t going to get to do anything else.”

What comes after isn’t easy Leah says “because it's all twisted up and tangled with grief. What you really want is for your family member to be there. But that's not the way things turned out for us, and over time it's become less confusing. We're thankful that we could help some people in his name.”

Legacy of Life offers a process where donors can write letters to recipients. Over time, Leah and Devin connected with one of the recipients who received a donation from Max. 

Leah struggles to describe it. “The magnitude of knowing another person is living their life and knowing that your kid’s body part is in there, helping to sustain that life, is just surreal.”

“I'm glad that because of Max, that child has more time in their life to spend with their family. It’s a beautiful experience, but also full of inner conflict. I had to just put it out to the universe, that this was a gift given in a purely selfless act.”

Organ donation is a blessing and something to be proud of, they say. It allows them to daydream about the impact their dynamic, charming and sometimes hot-tempered little boy is still having on the world. “It doesn't dampen the grief and the loss,” Devin says, “but it's still a gift of life. It's still good.”

Leah’s concluding words are tender, deliberate and full of pride.

“He was so cute, and so handsome. Whoever got those corneas was pretty lucky, because he had beautiful blue eyes, dark, blue, beautiful eyes.”

Photo of Leah Oickle and Devin Thomas with their son, Max.