Saving someone's life is an amazing thing. But when it's at the cost of someone else's, it becomes a completely different story. And while these tragedies come with a silver lining, it's important to always keep that sacrifice in mind. Here are some of the most incredible and heartbreaking stories from the people of Reddit.
u/Loveisforclosersonly asked: Redditors who had their lives saved by someone that gave up theirs, what's the story?
When a comment actually changes someone's perspective.
4 years ago to the day a boy committed suicide and his parents decided to donate his organs. 4 years ago tomorrow I received his heart.
3, almost 4 years ago, my boyfriend committed suicide and his family immediately donated every part of him, eyes, skin, organs, bones... And I was of course grateful that they made the right choice, but bitter that I never got to see his body because he was taken apart so quickly.
For some reason, even though I've heard amazing stories about body part donations, THIS was the comment that I think has given me peace.
This is so tragic.
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Not me, but a friend of a friend I had many years back. I'll call the kid Zeke. Zeke and a buddy were by our old intermediate school and hanging out by a drainage pond in the surrounding wetlands, no idea what its for or what it's used for but basically it's a super strong whirl pool that will take you under without a second thought.
Zeke, from what I recall (forgive me, this was 12-13 years ago) was dared to jump in the whirl pool, he did, and he basically got taken under immediately. Zeke bobbing above and under the water started screaming for help. Two men (teachers who were father and son) who frequently walked their dogs around the school premises noticed this and rushed to save this kid's life. They both jumped in and got Zeke back to land, unfortunately both of them that day were taken by this aggressive water and died.
I'm not so sure how Zeke took it, I was never real close to him in school and the relationship we did have was pretty much pass and repass. From what I observed though, it would suggest he took it pretty hard and never totally got over it. Of course anyone would understand why.
Glad he got clean after that.
Not quite sure if this counts but almost 7 years ago I was into some hard shit and my best friend did it with me. Not sure why, he was sick with a couple different long term illnesses, so we both know it wasn't good for him (hell it's not good in general, don't do drugs kids) but I was a stupid kid and we did everything together.
One night my life kinda imploded on itself and we doped up more than we ever had before. I was about to do another round when he tried talking me down. I made some excuse about not wanting my it to go to waste, which was bs I could've saved it for later. So he offered to use it up so that it wouldn't go to waste.
If I had taken that I'd have likely died of an overdose. He actually did, found out when I woke up. I've been sober ever since. He tried so hard to save me for so many years, I hope he knows that he really did.
Very brave of him.
I was in an armed robbery. He pointed the gun at me and my boyfriend tackled him taking three to the chest and one to the head. The kid panicked and fled. He is now doing 30 years and I was the sole witness at his trial.
Wow. I can only hope to be one tenth as brave as your boyfriend.
How traumatic.
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Not to me, but a family friend. There were 2 adults (barely, like 18 and 19) and 3 kids in the back ages 2, 6 and 7. They were driving back from the store to a family gathering and a drunk driver hit them, I don't know how but the guy in copilot jump back and protected the kids from the impact.
He passed away but the 3 kids were fine, the driver died too, the drunk guy fled. So when cops came to scene they found the little kids on the dead guys arms.
What a horrible birthday.
I was up at a friend's place and they went to a large funeral of someone I didn't know and this is the story:
Three or four daughters were swimming and got swept out by the tide. One by one the father rescued them. He managed to rescue all of them but drowned saving his last child.
The worst part of the story is that one of them had their birthday that day.
Amazing people.
I have two. They aren't me, if that's alright (seeing a lot of others in this technically-not-me category so I'm going for it), but they both stuck to me pretty hard.
- My uncle died trying to protect a couple who was being robbed in a restaurant. Some gangbangers came in and started to harass the people in the restaurant and guns were pulled. My uncle knew one of the guys since high school and figured he could talk him down from hurting anyone else. No one else got hurt except him. Never got to know him but heard he was an exceptionally cool dude.
- My teacher in kindergarten was diagnosed with cancer at a point it was aggressively treatable, but also found out she was pregnant. She needed to get an abortion before she could start any cancer treatments but she didn't want to have the abortion; the cancer was terminal by the time the baby arrived, and she left behind her husband and three children.
What hit me especially hard with my teacher is that my family remembered her becoming more easily agitated and stressed at the end of the school year, and we found out after her death, from her teacher's aid from that year, that it was around the time she was diagnosed with the cancer and choosing to have the baby over her own life. My mom got into several arguments with her for being too "insensitive" and mean to her students towards the end of the school year; teacher never told her or anyone about her condition.
Wow.
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Well, it was back in 1996, I was walking across a railroad track when all of a sudden I was struck from behind by a wheel chair. As I turned around a Via Rail train instantly blew away the 74 year old lady that just saved my life. I was so grateful, I helped retrieve her corpse from the oak tree 60 yards down the track.
Incredible.
Not me, but my grandmother. She was in a concentration camp in WWII with her family, and the day before her and her bunks were to be gassed, a soldier from the Latvian version of the SS allowed the group to escape in the night. When my dad tried to find info about the soldier when doing his genealogy research, he found out that the soldier was shot for that.
Sometime it's hard to put into words the depth of emotion a story like this causes.
That's so sad.
I had two friends till year 5 who were my only friends at the time. We were walking down the street, in India, to get to the shops when two people showed up and tried to grab me. They both pushed me back and they were stabbed.
I don't really remember much, but my parents have recently revealed that I was also stabbed, my brain shut down for a bit and lost quite a bit of my memory from before I was 10, but they both died in hospital.
Woah.
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I have an old coach who's wife grew up in Vietnam. She once told me a story about a time she was playing soccer with some friends from her village around the age of 10. The ball got kicked out of bounds into some brush on the edge of the field that they were playing in.
As her and one of her friends raced to the ball, her friend was faster and reached the ball first. As she came to a halt in front of the ball she stepped on an old land mine, completely vanishing out from in front of my coaches wife.
Scary.
My friend was drunk and tried to kill me while we were on a sidewalk. He came stumbling at me with a knife but he misstepped and fell onto the road, where a car ran over him. I still feel guilty.
