Death isn’t always the end.

We’re taught that it is, that after we live, we die. And while we do die, sometimes parts of us can live on.

For one Ohio bride, her wedding was made all the more special because the heart that beat inside her once belonged to another woman.

“I’m just grateful,” the newlywed said about donor Desiree Burge.

She had a very helping heart.”

Katherine Herrmann had spent her entire life up until this point, in and out of hospitals. When she was barely a month old, she was diagnosed with Shone’s Complex, which affects how the blood flows in and out of the left side of her heart.

“Growing up, hospitals were all I knew,” she says.

Throughout her life, Herrmann had more than 20 surgeries and procedures, including four open heart surgeries. She has had pacemakers and pacemaker replacements. But, she said, having a heart transplant was at first “never an option.”

Katherine Herrmann and husband Ian Herrmann at their wedding. Photo by Devin Hill

“You want to avoid it at all costs,” Herrmann said. “They always wanted to try and surgically fix what they could before ever looking at transplant.”

In 2018, during her freshman year at Kent State University, she started dating Ian Herrmann. During her first winter break at school, she was diagnosed with heart failure.

“He was very supportive about something a lot of people would be scared away by,” she said. “It wasn’t easy. There were tough days.”

She was determined, though, to graduate college.

“We would fear for what the future was, but we knew that we had to just pray and have faith and know that I’m a fighter and I haven’t ever given up and I never plan on it,” she says. “He is very supportive of making sure I continue to live life. But also, he makes sure I take rest when needed and watches out for my health.”

So when he proposed in 2020, Herrmann said “neither of us knew the future.”

“What we did know is that we wanted to do it together,” she said.

He always reminds me of how strong I am, and how far I’ve gotten, and that there’s nothing that we can’t face together.”

She was placed on the heart transplant waiting list in June 2021. And, as she had wanted, she graduated from college in May 2022. 

Kathryn Herrmann and her donor’s father. Photo by Lisa DeJong/Cleveland Clinic

Two months later, she was admitted to the Cleveland Clinic. After 35 days, a heart was found for her.

After surgery, the difference was monumental.

“I never knew what a healthy heart was. My heart has always been sick,” she explains. “For me, the transplant wasn’t, ‘Oh, I’m going back to normal.’ The transplant was an, ‘Oh my gosh, I am living a life that I’ve never been able to have before.'”

She knew she had to meet the heart donor’s family. She wrote a letter and was stunned when they agreed to meet her.

“I just immediately started bawling,” she says. “For me, it was a sign of a blessing. I knew this was what’s meant to be.”

She met with her heart donor’s parents and learned more about Desiree, who was 39 years old when she died.

“(Her parents were) very sweet and amazing people and love to share about her and tell me about her. And they’re very invested also in how I’m doing. Their church has been praying for me and they didn’t know about me at the time, specifically,” she says. “All they knew is that a 21-year-old female received Desiree’s heart.”

She has stayed in touch with Burge’s family and they even attended her one-year heart-a-versary party.

“We are very big on just making sure that we honor Desiree in a lot of ways and do as much as we can. For one, to live for me, but also to make sure that I’m using this heart to the best of my ability,” she says.

Watch Herrmann’s amazing story below!

Sources: People | Cleveland Clinic