“It’s pretty intimidating and pretty emotional,” Ms. Berg said. “Some people cannot bear it.”

But she said that meeting the recipients can bring solace to donor families.

Mr. Garcia was so young and strong that his corneas and six organs were healthy enough to transplant: his heart, one lung, his pancreas, both kidneys and his liver, which was divided to save two people, an adult and a child.

In photographs, Julio Garcia was handsome, with a mischievous smile. His wife said he loved to joke and laugh. But he was also deeply religious, and as a pastor at their evangelical church in Stamford he did a lot of preaching and marriage counseling. He earned his living as a carpenter. Both he and his wife, originally from Guatemala, became naturalized citizens.

For many years, he had suffered periodically from severe headaches, but he had been told they were migraines. The headaches were unusually bad during the week or so before March 17, a Wednesday. That day, his head hurting, he told his children he loved them and went to work.

He called his wife that afternoon, saying the pain was terrible and he was going numb all over. She wanted to call an ambulance, but he asked her to pick him up instead. She drove him to a hospital in Stamford. A major hemorrhage and swelling were putting pressure on his brain. Doctors tried to relieve the pressure, and then transferred Mr. Garcia to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital in Manhattan.

By the time he arrived there on Wednesday night, he was in a deep coma, needed a ventilator to breathe and had extremely low blood pressure — all signs of a large hemorrhage affecting the brain stem, according to Dr. Axel Rosengart, the director of neurocritical care. Doctors stabilized him and tried again to reduce the pressure on his brain, but scans showed extensive, irreversible damage, Dr. Rosengart said.

Dr. Rosengart said he was not certain but suspected that the bleeding was caused by an arteriovenous malformation, a blood vessel abnormality that Mr. Garcia may have had from birth.