Dawn Grace of Kentucky held her face against the chest of Joseph Hansen, 55, to hear her son's heartbeat for the first time since he died in 2012.
This Kentucky mother lost her son four years ago, but she was able to hear his heartbeat for the first time after meeting the Iowa man who received it in a transplant.
Read: The Gift That Keeps on Giving: Mother Hears Her Daughter's Heart Beat Inside Another Child
In an emotional reunion, Dawn Grace of Crofton held her face against the chest of Joseph Hansen, 55, to hear her son’s heartbeat for the first time since he died in 2012.
"I was just thinking about how beautiful it was," Grace told InsideEdition.com. "It was exactly four years to the day I heard his heart beat for the last time."
During the Nebraska Medicine press conference Friday, Dawn Grace explained her son died when he was 14 years old after he accidentally shot himself with a gun.
“It was a defective gun,” Grace explained. “With his 14-year-old mind, he didn’t think it worked.”
On the way to the hospital, Grace said she remembered paramedics asking if she wanted to donate her son’s organs. “I was very angry. I was still in shock when I was asked," she told InsideEdition.com.
But she reconsidered, and decided that donating Calen’s organs was ultimately what he would have wanted: "That's what he would have done because Calen, he was a very giving child."
Little did she know, her decision changed the life of Hansen, of Council Bluffs, Iowa.
“I wasn’t able to do things people my age was doing,” Hansen said.
He said he felt himself “dragging a little bit more and more,” before he started having heart attacks.
Finally, Hansen was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. His heart muscles were thicker than normal, which made it difficult to pump blood to the rest of his body.
When he received the transplant, Hansen immediately reached out to the family of the donor.
The Grace family sent a letter back, including Calen’s final school portrait from 2012, which Hansen now carries in the front fold of his wallet.
“All I could think about was the young man,” he said during the press conference. “That’s all I could think about.”
Watch: Boy Who Spent 99 Days in ICU Waiting for Heart Transplant Meets Donor's Family
