Katherine Heigl Encourages Organ Donation in Anniversary Post about Her Brother's Death

"Grey's Anatomy" star Katherine Heigl has used the anniversary of her late brother's death to encourage fans to sign up as organ donors to ensure that more lives can be saved by those who donate.

Katherine Heigl's brother passed away 35 years ago, and though she does not often talk about him or why he lost his life, she has recently taken to Instagram to implore her fans to donate their organs after being inspired by her mother speaking out about it.

While there is no mention of whether or not Heigl's brother needed an organ donated to him, it is clear from the Instagram post that organ donation is close to the Heigl family's hearts.

JASON

By her admission on her Instagram post, Heigl does not talk about her brother's death and does not acknowledge the day he died publicly very often, but she decided to do so this year.

Heigl revealed her brother, Jason, passed away the week before his sixteenth birthday after being in ICU on a life support machine for a week following a car accident. The revelation was accompanied by a photograph of Jason on the beach at around 13 years old.

Heigl said that the car accident in 1986 led to her parents having to make the difficult decision a week later to take their son off of life support. She said this was what he would have wanted, and her parents knew that.

KATHERINE

In this Instagram post, Heigl also shared a few words from an email her mother had sent to a friend this year regarding Jason's death, in which her mother said they decided to donate Jason's organs.

Heigl has said that it was not an easy decision to make for anybody in the family, but it was the right decision to help save the lives of people who needed the organs.

She added that Heigl's parents knew that this was the decision they knew their son would want to be made on his behalf and that the family donated everything that could be donated.

Heigl went on to say that her mother donated Jason's organs because she did not want anybody else to suffer the way Jason had if they didn't have to, and it was that that compelled them to donate.

She then implored her fans to donate their organs even though it is a difficult decision, stressing that while it is not an easy decision, it is the right decision.

She ended the post by saying her brother's death has taught her that while death is inevitable, nobody is in it alone.