Virtual Butterfly Garden Donor Memorial

 

Thank you to everyone who submitted to our virtual butterfly garden! We’re proud to help honor your donor heroes.

The virtual butterfly garden was created in April 2020 as an alternate way to honor loved ones during National Donate Life Month. In past times, Southern Eye Bank has held in-person memorial events. These events included candlelight ceremonies, flag raisings, and donor drives. In this way we honored loved ones who have moved on to another realm, but chose to give what they could not take with them to benefit those of us still on this earthly plane. Selfless heroes, all!

With social distancing in place during the Spring of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we could not hold these events that are near and dear to our hearts. Hospitals and churches served as the gathering places for these events. In April 2020, we could not conscionably continue to hold National Donate Life Month events in such public spaces. However, Southern Eye Bank was determined to honor our donor heroes even as we could not come together as a community. Thus, we created the virtual butterfly garden donor memorial.

The response from donor relatives and friends has been truly touching. Friends and relatives sent us favorite quotes and memories of their loved ones. We then posted these memories to the Southern Eye Bank Instagram account, along with an image of a butterfly. The colors of the butterflies represent the favorite colors of the donors – another small way their memory lives on.

Necessity birthed this new tradition, to be sure. However, it is a tradition which we hope to continue in the years ahead!

Below are the memorial butterflies from April 2020.