On her wedding day, Jeni Stepien couldn't have her father next to her. But to accompany her to the altar there was a man in whose breast he continued to beat the heart that had been of his father.
Michael Stepien died in 2006 after being shot during a robbery attempt at Swissvale, Pennsylvania.
After his death, the family decided to donate his organs.
His heart was transplanted to Arthur “Tom” Thomas, a New Jersey man suffering from severe heart disease and was now in critical condition.
Arthur received the opportunity to continue to live.
Jeni had to learn to live without his father.
Ten years passed.
In 2016 came one of the days when that absence would be even more difficult to ignore: Jeni was marrying Paul Maenner in Pennsylvania.
It was Paul who suggested asking Arthur to take her to the altar.
Jeni wrote to him.
Their families had remained in contact with letters and phone calls in the years following the transplant, but Jeni and Arthur had never met in person.
Arthur accepted.
The day before the wedding came to Pennsylvania and met Jeni for the first time. At that time he took her hand and supported her fingers on her wrist, allowing her to feel the heartbeat she had received from Michael.
It was the first time in ten years that Jeni felt that beat again.
The next day came the time of the wedding.
Jeni took Arthur's arm and went through the aisle together.
Arthur couldn't replace Michael and nobody could have done it.
But in his chest he continued to beat the heart Michael had given ten years earlier.
Just before Arthur entrusted Jeni to the groom, she also supported her hand on her chest. That moment was immortalized in one of the best known photographs of the ceremony.
This is also one of the most profound aspects of organ donation.
Behind a transplant there are not only clinical records, interventions and compatibility. There are two families crossed by the same gesture in completely different ways: one faces a loss, while the other receives the possibility to continue to live.
On that day these two stories met along the aisle of a wedding.
Ten years ago, Michael's heart donation helped save a man's life he didn't know.
Ten years later, that man accompanied his daughter to the beginning of a new life.