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Parents Turn Son’s Funeral into Celebration with Surprise Wedding

7-year-old Asa Hill had always hoped his parents would get married one day. So after Asa died in a car accident, his mother and father decided to honor his wishes with a surprise wedding at the end of his funeral.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on September 09 2009
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Image: iStockphoto

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Last Thursday, six cars collided on the Niagara Thruway outside of Buffalo, New York, and within moments, bystanders rushed in to save the trapped passengers from the vehicles. When one of the car’s engines caught fire, one Good Samaritan grabbed a fire extinguisher to put out the flames; another used a saw to cut the cars’ frames apart and pull out the unconscious people trapped inside.

“There wasn’t one hero,” Michael Byham, one of the volunteer rescuers, told the Buffalo News. “There was a bunch of people who jumped in.”

Thanks to their quick and cool-headed work, several people were injured, but only one passenger, 7-year-old Asa Hill, who’d been traveling with his grandfather, seemed to be in critical condition—he was immediately rushed to a hospital and placed on life support.

Sadly, doctors soon declared the young boy brain-dead. His parents, Amilcar Hill and Rahwa Ghirmatzion, said their goodbyes to their only child the next day, and gave their blessing for the staff to harvest Asa’s organs, so that he could save the lives of others.

Despite their devastating loss, Hill and Ghirmatzion are choosing to focus on the happiness that their son brought them in his short life. “He enjoyed being loved,” Amilcar Hill told the Buffalo News. “He enjoyed being our baby. He enjoyed being our son, I know that for a fact. He told us, I know it’s for real. He enjoyed his moments with everyone. That’s who he was.”

Hill and Ghirmatzion had been a couple since they were teenagers, and though they’d never gotten married, they were deeply committed to their relationship. But Asa always wanted them to celebrate their love with a real wedding, and asked them several times if they would get married. Though they told him they would, they never got around to following through.

But after Asa died, the couple decided to pay tribute to their son by honoring his request in an unusual way. Rather than using his funeral as an occasion for grief, Hill and Ghirmatzion decided to turn it into a celebration.

More than 1,100 people attended the funeral service on Monday, which was filled with tributes to Asa from family and friends, African drum performances, and dancing. And, to cap it all off, the service ended with Hill and Ghirmatzion walking down the church aisle, pledging their lifelong commitment to one another in a beautiful wedding. Asa’s parents knew their son would have loved it.

“We wanted it to be a surprise,” Hill told CNN. “We knew it would be a joyous moment. You could see how it lifted them, and we figured, why not make it a surprise at the end.”

Filed under: General Interest,

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