The rest of the story

My column in the South County Times of Dec. 20, 2019, tells the remarkable story of my nephew Nick Gibson, his chance encounter with a bone marrow registry in 2008, and Jennifer Golden, the Long Island mother of three who survived a bout with leukemia after getting Nick’s stem cells in a bone marrow transplant in 2018.

I always wish I can write more than the 450 or so words I’m allowed each week, but word counts are important. So here’s more to the story:

Nick was the last grandchild known by my mom, Betty Gibson, who died of leukemia on March 3, 1994, at age 55, and who is the reason Nick stopped by that table at the University of Missouri all those years ago for the registry.

Betty was of Irish descent, was about as faithful a Catholic as you can be, didn’t know a stranger, loved to laugh and loved her family fiercely. Nick was just 3 when she died, and most of his memories of her are stories we’ve told over the years. But I got to witness firsthand how much joy he and his brother Dan brought to her life. Once those grandkids came, it was over for the rest of us. Not really, but you know how grandmas are.

So when Nick notified that he was a match for someone, our family’s collective heart soared. Here’s the column I wrote about his experience as a donor through the registry DKMS. When you think about it, it’s pretty remarkable that a complete stranger who lives in another part of the country can share parts of an individual’s DNA.

It’s quite possible the match was through Nick’s maternal line, and if so there’s not a better family than the Dixons and the Rallos of Southern Illinois. Or maybe it was the Gibsons and Cliffords of St. Louis, Nick’s paternal lineage. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the connection. I like to imagine that one of these families, generations and generations ago, stepped off Ellis Island in New York Harbor in the mid-19th century and then had to face living and surviving in a new country. I’m guessing one family member said, “I’m staying here,” and another said, “New York’s too crowded, I’m heading west.” And just like that, goodbye forever. Yet here we are, in 2019, connected again.

There’s one more element to this story: When DKMS informed Nick that his his recipient wanted to meet him, they began exchanging emails. In her introduction, Jennifer attached a picture of her family at Disney World taken about six months before she got sick, and Nick shared that picture with us.

The first thing you notice was the smiles of a mom and a dad and three beautiful girls at the Happiest Place On Earth. But there was also this: In Jennifer’s hair a red and white polka dot bow, just like the one worn by Minnie Mouse.

That’s the part of the picture that prompted me to close my office door. My mom, Nick’s Grandma Betty, loved Disney World — and Minnie Mouse. Her dream was to retire to Florida after raising her family in Missouri, and she said she wanted to live close enough to Disney World so she could get a job as Minnie. (Which was really funny because she had no experience in amusement parks, nor any mascot training that we know of.) But she loved everything Disney, and I’m pretty sure she might have applied if given the opportunity.

She and my dad had just begun looking into retirement communities in Florida when she got sick. She was diagnosed in June of 1993 and died nine months later.

So seeing that picture of Golden at Disney World with her husband and three beautiful daughters, with Minnie’s bow in her hair, made all the sense in the world. Maybe Betty got that job as Minnie Mouse after all.

The bone marrow registry DKMS matched Jennifer with Nick, and it all started with a cheek swab. Here’s how to join.