Ben Warner’s family tried for years to help him beat the drug addiction that ultimately cost him his life.
“It was really sad that it had such a hold on him, and he just couldn’t get over it,” said Ben’s mother Holly Warner.
When Ben died of an overdose in August 2024, his family learned the 37-year-old was a registered organ donor.
“It didn’t surprise us, because that’s just the type of person Ben was. He always put other people first,” said Warner.
As she was planning her son’s memorial, Warner received a card of condolence written by one of the recipients of Ben’s donated organs.
Mark Hofeling received Ben’s liver, and when he was recovering in hospital, he knew he wanted to reach out to the family of the anonymous donor.
“The sense of gratitude I was feeling was so overwhelming that it felt like I was having a hard time catching my breath,” said Hofeling. “It felt like a tremendous responsibility to pour this very complex set of feelings into a single card. But I did my best, and BC Transplant got it to Ben’s family.”
Warner said the letter helped her through the early days of her grief, and that it came in time for her to share it during her son’s memorial service.
“I got up the courage to read it aloud to everyone, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room,” Warner said.
‘I needed to meet him’
A year after an organ donation, the recipient and the donor’s family can communicate through BC Transplant if both sides agree, so Hofeling wrote a letter to the family of the man who donated his liver, whose name he still didn’t know.
“I decided to write a history of the year and everything it meant to me and the restoration of my health and this beautiful new life I was living,” Hofeling said.
“It took me hours to get through it, to finish reading it, because of the tears,” said Warner. “And that’s when I decided that I needed to not only write back to this man, I knew then that I needed to meet him as well.”
That face-to-face meeting happening in February.
“It felt like my spirit could finally settle and I could point all of this gratitude that was kind of suffocating me in the right direction and wrap my arms around Ben’s family and his mother Holly and the people most responsible for this miracle in my life,” said Hofeling.
“There’s no words that can describe it. It was just surreal, like I had a piece of my son, and he lives on,” said Warner.
‘I see him as part of my son’
Hofeling was one of three people whose lives were saved by Ben’s decision to register as an organ donor.
“And that’s exactly what helped me through it all, was knowing that he helped other people,” said his mom.
“I can’t imagine what is more heroic than that as your final act in life,” added Hofeling.
Now close friends, Hofeling and Warner said they’re proof organ donation can be healing for both the recipient and the donor’s family.
“Once we got over that emotional hump of meeting, I felt like I was with my family, and I still do,” said Hofeling.
“I see him as part of my son,” said Warner. “He’s always going to be part of the family now.”
