Family honors Bassett girl’s wish to donate organs

The life of a 12-year-old Henry County girl was cut short, but her impact on others will be felt for years to come and will help others live fuller lives.

Celeste Adalyn Scearce passed away at Carillion Roanoke Memorial Hospital on Sunday, June 2, after her Honor Walk into surgery to be an organ donor. The walk is a ceremonial event to commemorate a patient whose organs are donated.

“We all knew that that’s what she wanted,” Brandi Scearce said of the donation, and added that her daughter had decided to be an organ donor “years ago with her dad. She had to get like an ID card at Disney World or something. Dave, her dad, asked her if she wanted to be” an organ donor on the card. Celeste “was like, ‘yeah.’”

Although honoring her daughter’s wish was never in question, “we were not aware of the process. They literally had to keep her body going for days after she quit breathing on her own,” Brandi Scearce said.

Celeste was injured in a May 26 car crash in Bassett. She was riding in the backseat of the vehicle at the time, and was immediately knocked unconscious. She was airlifted to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital for treatment of an apparent brain injury.

“I don’t think she knew what hit her. She never regained consciousness,” Brandi Scearce said.

One of Celeste’s aunts, Ilesha Dumbrill, was driving the vehicle. Another aunt, Sky Evans, was in the passenger seat. Dumbrill’s injuries required staples in part of her head, while Evans received some bruising and whiplash. The two women also suffered concussions, Brandi Scearce said.

The three were on the way to Brandi Scearce’s mother’s house to get Celeste’s hair straightener, Brandi Scearce said, and recalled that Celeste “had just dyed her hair black for the first time.”

The incident occurred when the vehicle stopped, and prepared to make a turn. It was pushed several feet forward, Brandi Scearce said. “I came to the wreck with all my kids in the car and it was very obvious what had happened.”

After immediate brain surgery to relieve the swelling and a CT scan, Brandi Scearce saw an image of her daughter’s brain.

“The whole thing except for the outsides was dead and damaged, and they said those cells could not grow,” she said. “The doctor explained to me more than likely what would happen is that her brain stem was still working, so her heart was still beating through the whole thing.”

When she saw Celeste at the scene, Brandi Scearce said her daughter looked like herself. However, after arriving at the hospital, half of her head had been shaved to prep for immediate brain surgery – something her mother and the family knew Celeste wouldn’t like.

“She is so beautiful, but she was really self-conscious,” Brandi Scearce said, and added that Dumbrill shaved her head in a show of support for Celeste.

“A nurse’s aide did that for her. She was not supposed to do that, but she did, and she came in on her day off so she could personally walk Celeste’s bed with her on the walk down to the operating room,” Brandi Scearce said.

By May 28, Celeste was no longer breathing on her own and a ventilator was needed to breathe for her.

Celeste was also on fentanyl to ensure she was never in any pain, and her mother said she underwent three or four brain death tests.

On May 30, Celeste was determined to have no brain function and declared brain dead. She was on the ventilator until June 2, when she went into surgery to become an organ donor, Brandi Scearce recalled.

Because her daughter suffered a collapsed lung during the incident, and her lungs were also scarred from a bout with double pneumonia at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, “we didn’t think her lungs were going to be able to go” to a donor.

The days Celeste’s body was kept going after she stopped breathing on her own were “really hard, really weird for a lot of people because we felt her in spirit all around us and at one point, we didn’t think her heart was going to make it because it started failing,” Brandi Scearce she said.

She said the heart issue “was after that last brain death test. They did it (test) for 40 minutes, I think it was too hard on her heart.”

Brandi Scearce said after medication was administered, an ECHO (echocardiogram, which uses ultrasound to monitor the heart function) found Celeste’s heart was normal and strong.

Now, “it should be beating in somebody at Duke. Her lungs I don’t think went,” but “her liver and other organs went, too,” she said.

Remembering Celeste

Besides experimenting with hair color – “she always dyed her hair, she was always trying to dye it,” Brandi Scearce said, adding her daughter loved softball. “She was a catcher, and she liked that position. She played up until this last year when she had to try out for middle school, which was a whole new ordeal because it was actually a tryout. She didn’t make it, which everybody was upset about because” she wanted to make the team.

Celeste loved the color purple more than any other color, Brandi Scearce said, and added that medical personnel “tried to get everybody to wear purple for her Hero (Honor) Walk. We had one who … was a nurse aide, and she just really stepped up to the plate. I think the nurses” on the team caring for her “are unbelievably amazing.”

Because Celeste liked fake nails “my sister tried to bring some fake nails to the hospital, but they wouldn’t let her do it. Lily, my nine-year-old daughter, painted Celeste’s nails for her in the bed,” Brandi Scearce said.

Celeste, who had attended both Campbell Court Elementary School, and Fieldale-Collinsville Middle School, also liked fairies and rap music. “She liked Harry Potter for a while, but she thought it was stupid recently,” she said.

While Celeste had always loved art and painting, she had recently developed an interest in photography – something she and Brandi Scearce, a photographer, had in common.

While Celeste originally wanted to be a teacher, Scearce said her daughter changed her mind after she had three other children, “That changed to a brain surgeon, which I think is very weird cause that’s what happened to her- – it was her brain, it was too damaged,” she said.

Brandi Scearce added Celeste’s favorite show was “Grey’s Anatomy,” a medical drama series that premiered in 2005. “She watched the entire show. She got personally involved in it she was telling me,” she said, with a soft chuckle.

“She had a lot of friends, a whole lot. She loved them and they loved her. She was very well loved at her schools. She had an attitude sometimes, but she was 12. It wasn’t out of the normal,” Brandi Scearce said.

In addition to her aunts, parents and friends, Celeste was also close to Brandi Scearce’s brother, Chris, who was in a motorcycle accident the week before Celeste’s.

Celeste insisted on staying at the hospital while her uncle was there.

“She said that she was not going to leave until she talked to Chris, which I feel like is kind of crazy, but she didn’t. She stayed for like five days sleeping in the waiting room with my mom,” Brandi Scearce said, adding that Celeste “had a really, really big heart. It’s been unimaginable for everybody. It’s been two weeks of just pure shock.”

A good sister to her three younger siblings- Lily, 9; Alister, 6; and Kai, 4, Celeste also had a close relationship with her older brother, Blaine, who is 20.

“She was a good sister though she got annoyed with them all. She loved them all to death. We’re still in shock,” Brandi Scearce said.

Lily, who was more capable of understanding the accident, “was really upset. She was freaking out trying to get them to put her in the ambulance with her, freaking out because she wanted to ride in the helicopter with her.

“I had to drive her to the hospital, and she stayed there,” Brandi Scearce said, adding despite Lily staying with her paternal grandmother, she returned to the hospital every day.

A Ronald McDonald House was secured for the family to stay in the last couple of days, and while she originally didn’t know if she wanted her sons to be at the hospital, Brandi Scearce said she eventually decided to explain it to them and let them make their own decision.

“I wanted to involve them in the process because I didn’t just want to come home and tell them that she was gone and they just not really quite understand,” she said.

As a result, Brandi Scearce said Celeste’s siblings visited her in the hospital and the family did fingerprint artwork with the nurses.

“I put my handprint down in paint, and then they helped me put Celeste’s hand on top of that, and then I got Lily, and then Alister, and then Kai. So, they did some artwork in there and they saw her, and I explained it to them,” Brandi Scearce said, adding the three children were also there for Celeste’s honor walk.

“They’re okay right now, and they understand,” she said.

Before leaving Roanoke, Brandi Scearce said she went to Build-A-Bear Workshop and purchased several bears for her family. “The nurses gave me a really good recording of her heartbeat. So we went, and I got a bear for me and all the kids.”

At some point last week in Roanoke, Brandi Scearce said she visited a spot by the river near the hospital as she tried to process the tragedy. There, she felt reminded “to remember the beautiful things in this life.

“Maybe it was Celeste coming by to remind me, because she saw it,” Brandi Scearce said, adding that Celeste “saw the actual beauty of nature” and life.

In fact, Brandi Scearce said she cherishes a photograph Celeste took last year while visiting the beach with her father.

“It was a sunrise on the beach, and it was the most beautiful picture that I’ve ever seen. It’s a really good picture, and it looks professional,” Brandi Scearce said, and added her daughter “would always stop me or whoever was driving, if the clouds were pretty or if the sunset was there. She noticed those things.”

Eventually, Brandi Scearce said she wants to hold a memorial for Celeste and her friends.

“I haven’t figured that out yet, but I would like to have that at a park outside. I don’t want to have a funeral,” Brandi Scearce said, adding that Celeste “really appreciated the beauty of the world, which I think is pretty wild for a 12-year-old.”