For 47 years, my Mom has been one of my biggest supporters and cheerleaders. She’s watched me keep the upper-hand on cystic fibrosis, then watched cystic fibrosis slowly gain the upper-hand on me – then she rejoiced when a beautiful person and family gave me two new lungs.
She loves “pinning” people with “Donate Life” lapel pins. She doesn’t just give them a pin – she tells them a story. She tells of her son struggling – and she tells of a beautiful girl from Iowa who saved his life. If her son is anywhere near her when she’s telling this story, she pulls him over and introduces him. Under other circumstances, he might be a little embarrassed about this – but he can see the pride and joy in her eyes while she’s talking to them.
She wants to write that beautiful girl’s Mom a letter, but she cries anytime she thinks about it. That Mom lost a precious and beautiful daughter, but because of her and them, she didn’t lose her son.
Over the years she has probably touched over 10,000 lives with her story. I know that Gift of Hope has given her over 10,000 pins – and they’re gone… Lately, she has stuffed hundreds of little plastic bags with green “Donate Life / Done Vida” wrist bands, a “Donate Life” lapel pin, and she folds up a copy of a this little poem and puts it in each bag:
To Remember Me by Robert Test
At a certain moment a doctor will determine that my brain has ceased to function and that, for all intents and purposes, my life has stopped. When that happens, do not attempt to instill artificial life into my body by the use of a machine. And don't call this my "deathbed." Call it my "bed of life," and let my body be taken from it to help others lead fuller lives.
Give my sight to a man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby's face or love in the eyes of a woman.
Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain.
Give my blood to the teen-ager who has been pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play.
Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week.
Take my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve in my body, and find a way to make a crippled child walk.
Explore every corner of my brain. Take my cells, if necessary, and let them grow so that someday a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her windows.
Burn what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow.
If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses, and all my prejudice against my fellow man.
Give my sins to the devil. Give my soul to God. If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you. If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.
I know a beautiful girl from Iowa who will live forever. And I know a couple of Moms (and Dads) from Illinois and Iowa who will live forever in my heart.