The Emily Matejovitz Foundation

Having a toddler who is waiting for a kidney transplant is strange. Setting aside the nightly dialysis, you just spend a lot of time getting prepared and just kind of staying that way.

You just stay prepared, indefinitely.

By the time Emily gave Ripley his perfect kidney, we had been trained three separate times on how to care for a young transplant patient, once for every year that went by without getting a match. We knew Ripley's doctors well. We knew his surgeon well. We sat with her through every training, reviewing the diagrams again and again for how organ transplant works in a very, very small child.

But the trainings were not when we really got to know her. It was the late nights and early mornings of the maybes.

The first time we got a call about a potential kidney, we told everyone we knew. We drove to the hospital and posted selfies with our "SURGERY - PARENT" stickers on. We got Ripley prepped, got him into a surgical gown.

And then we drove home. I deleted the Facebook posts.

No kidney.

After that, we stopped telling anyone we didn't absolutely have to when we got a call about a possible match.

That story, or a version of it, happened three more times before we got the call about Emily's kidney.

By the night of Ripley's transplant, I would go so far as to say we were friends with his surgeon. She had cried with us over maybes that didn't work out. And she cried with us that night because it was really happening.

And she knew that I already knew the answer when I said "What can you tell us about the donor?" right before Ripley went back.

The answer was nothing. The answer was always nothing.

But we knew right then what this meant. It was all we could think about. Audra and I sat in the food court of the hospital that night overwhelmed with joy because our lives were about to be completely upended but also with a deep and profound understanding of what this meant for another family somewhere.

We've thought about Emily every day after Ripley's transplant and we still do. We spent a long time with a lot of love and a lot of appreciation with nowhere to put it.

And that ends today.

I am so beyond proud to announce that with Emily's family, we have founded The Emily Matejovitz Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to honoring Emily's memory for years to come.

The foundation awards an annual scholarship to a graduating high school senior who leads with the same compassion and purpose Emily did. She wanted to attend Ferris State University and become an ultrasound technician. She was sixteen and she knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life, and it was to help people.

The foundation also maintains a page of mental health and crisis resources. It exists because Emily needed resources like those, and they were not easy enough to find. That is not going to be someone else's story.

There is so much work to do, but sitting here today I can tell you that Audra, Ripley and I have funded this year's scholarship and we have big plans for raising the funds every year going forward to do the same. Emily gave our family everything. This is how we say thank you.

If you want to learn more, get involved, or donate, visit emilymatejovitzfoundation.org.