The day Janell Anderson’s 20-year-old son died in a Minnesota hospital, a nurse handed her a sheet of paper with a list of the organs that were being harvested from his body.

A loopy heart was drawn at the top of the list, and next to it, a few words about the recipient. A 56-year-old man. He had been waiting for 230 days.

That was all Janell knew about the person who was getting Austin Shimon’s healthy heart. But on that day, May 23, 2009, it was enough. Janell prayed for the stranger.

Early the next morning, some 275 miles west in Aberdeen, S.D., a woman went to a computer and updated her Facebook status. There wasn’t much time. They had to leave quickly. She wrote, “Larry got the call from Mayo this morning….they have a heart for him, his surgery is scheduled for 1 p.m. Please keep him in your prayers!”

Larry Alexander, a 56-year-old pathologist who thought he would die before he got a transplant, woke from surgery the next day in Rochester, Minn., smiled at his wife and said, “I got a heart.”

And as Austin’s family gathered in Janell’s hometown of Barron, Wis., to prepare for his funeral, other patients were just beginning to recover from surgery. A 50-year-old woman got Austin’s lungs. A 31-year-old woman received his liver. One kidney went to an 18-year-old woman. The other kidney went to a 68-year-old woman. A 58-year-old woman received his pancreas.

He was the youngest of Janell’s three boys and the tallest at 6 feet 4 1/2 inches. He had brown hair and blue eyes. He talked about doing something big in his life and imagined himself on buying trips to London as a fashion merchandiser. He had just finished his sophomore year at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

It was a Friday, and he was riding a friend’s motorcycle on a rural highway about 20 miles outside of Minneapolis. Later, the police told Janell and her family the bike lost traction on some gravel in the road. Trying to balance himself, Austin stretched out his leg to touch a guardrail. His pants caught the rail and pulled him from the bike. He hit a pole and broke his neck.

He was unconscious from that moment. A helicopter flew him to the hospital near Minneapolis.

At her home in Hopkinsville, Janell was watching Oprah on television when her ex-husband called from Minneapolis.

“Is he still alive?” she asked. Austin’s father said he didn’t know. They had to come quickly.

They arrived late that night and heard the news. Austin would not live. His brothers and his parents began their goodbyes in his hospital room. They doted over him and kissed him and took photographs. They told stories and reminisced. They laughed and they sobbed.

On May 26, they buried Austin.

In July, Janell received a letter from LifeSource, the organization that had arranged for the organ donations. It gave her a brief report on each recipient.

There were no names, but one entry said this: “A 56-year-old man received the gift of Austin’s heart. This recipient is married, lives in South Dakota and is a father. This patient had waited for a heart transplant since July 2008. He is a physician and is home and doing well. He said he’s happy to receive this gift, thank you.”

Later that summer, Janell wrote a letter to each organ recipient and included a photo of Austin carrying a guitar on his back.

He had a magnificent soul and a beautiful smile that will never be forgotten,” she wrote.

All of the correspondence went through LifeSource.

Next Janell received a card from the heart recipient. He began, “My name is Larry and I am a pathologist in South Dakota.” He told Janell about his heart attack in March of 2008. He told her about his hobby, karaoke. The doctor liked to sing country music.

Although LifeSource wasn’t sharing full names or contact information between the families, Janell had all she needed in the doctor’s letter. As Janell husband’s Brad said, how many pathologists named Larry could there be in South Dakota? She found him online in a feature story in his hometown paper in Aberdeen. She printed the story and two photos of the doctor.

Back in Aberdeen, Larry and his wife had also done some detective work. Weeks later, Janell received a Facebook message. “My name is Kelly Alexander and my husband Larry received Austin’s heart.”

In the year since then, the Andersons and the Alexanders have gotten to know each other through cards, photographs, phone calls and text messages. They pray for each other.

Janell says the recipient of her son’s heart is different from the others because the heart can be heard and felt. Larry, who is still recovering from the transplant, feels overwhelmed and sometimes guilty about walking around with a young man’s heart in his chest. Why did he live and Janell’s son have to die?

“There is no closure,” he says.

This week, Janell and Larry got to talk about those emotions in person. The doctor and his wife drove more than 1,000 miles from South Dakota to Clarksville, Tenn., where they have family. They are spending Thanksgiving week in Clarksville and Hopkinsville.

Sunday afternoon, Janell and her family waited at her son’s house in Clarksville for Larry to arrive with his wife. They had been driving for two days.

They cried and hugged in the driveway until Larry was exhausted. No one spoke.

Later, inside the house, Larry let them take turns listening to the heart. One after another, they pressed their faces against his chest.

Janell sat down next to Larry and said she had to listen again. He let her lay her head down on his chest. And then she realized something. It wasn’t just Austin’s heart inside this man. Half of Austin’s heart came from her.

She told Larry, “That is part of me in you.”

Jennifer P. Brown can be reached at 270-887-3236 or jpbrown@kentuckynewera.com.