Although Rebekah Brown, 30, isn’t able to spend Thanksgiving with her late brother Joshua, she’ll be celebrating his memory in another way.
To honor Joshua, Brown held a special early Thanksgiving dinner with two men who received her brother’s donated body parts, Inside Edition reports. Among the dinners’ guests were Richard Norris, who underwent the first U.S. full face transplant in 2012 following a disfiguring gun accident in 1997, and John Jenkins, who was hours away from dying of heart failure before a 2012 transplant. Both Norris’s face and Jenkins’ heart came from Brown’s brother after he died in a car accident at the age of 21.
“I feel like there’s nothing more powerful than to give the gift of life back,” Brown told the program.
Watch a video of the dinner below:
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Eyewitness Accounts From the Trump Rally Shooting
- From 2022: How the Threat of Political Violence Is Transforming America
- ‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
- Remembering Shannen Doherty , the Quintessential Gen X Girl
- How Often Do You Really Need to Wash Your Sheets?
- Why Mail Theft Is on the Rise
- Welcome to the Noah Lyles Olympics
- Get Our Paris Olympics Newsletter in Your Inbox
Contact us at letters@time.com