I want to share with you a very touching write up by an organ donor’s mother. It’s a little long, but please take the time to read it. You will be glad you did!
Lisa, Donor mother
Texas
July 4th, 1998, my 24-year-old son James called to check up on how I was doing (my mother had died suddenly two days earlier). Oh God, if I had known this would be our last conversation; I would have memorized each word and burned it into my very soul!
Before going into work to wrap things up, he let me know he had arranged to take off the rest of the week and would see me later....If only I had kept him on the line longer...or shorter...if only!!! This will forever haunt me...I told him I loved him.... he said he loved me...and we said good-bye...and hung up the phone.
In less then an hour, our lives would be shattered forever by an 18-wheeler that was stopped and straddling two lanes on the highway. James' car went under the truck; another car hit him from behind. Our son was airlifted to the hospital with a 5-inch gash across his forehead down to his cheek, three skull fractures and every facial bone broken. He already had irreversible brain damage, which kept getting worse as his brain continued to swell. The doctors tried to prepare us on how he would look...but no amount of words could ever have described how he looked when we walked into that ICU room. My handsome son, who had been so intelligent and musically gifted, who had graduated school with honors, now lay so still and barely recognizable. Tubes were coming out from everywhere and in the background we heard the sadistic whoosh of the ventilator softly mocking us. An array of lights danced overhead on the monitor's screen. I was to learn what each number meant...and as each hour and day went by I dreaded looking up at the changing numbers, yet I dreaded not doing it either. James' brain continued to swell, his cranial pressure climbing. He was in as deep of a coma next to brain death as you can be.
THREE WEEKS EARLIER, while on the way to get his kittens their rabies shots, James and I had talked about a little girl on the news that was waiting to have a liver transplant and how important organ donation was. I had commented how terrible it had to be for her parents not knowing whether their child would live or die. "Look at how many people die every day in the United States," he said to me, "and I bet there would be one of them that could be a match for her. It's not like they need them anymore".
On July 9th, 1998 James was declared brain dead. There are no adjectives to convey my feelings on how I felt. No word too awful, or invented to explain to others my agony. To grasp how tormented you are seeing your child, once so alive (ALIVE!) well, you just can't.
We had already spoken to our other children on their feelings on donating James' organs and we were all in agreement. We requested for the hospital to get in touch with the transplant coordinator for us. After friends and family said their good-byes to him, I stayed in the room with him until the organ recovery team would get there in a few hours. I talked to James. I sang to him old and familiar hymns. I touched his face, his chest, his hands, knees and toes. I told him how we loved him so very much and how he was so special. I laid my head down on his chest and listened to the beat of his heart. A heart that had once been growing inside me and grew up and lived too short of a life. I felt the warmth of his body and knew it would not be too much longer. I wanted time to stand still, or at least go very slowly...it went all too fast. Then it was time for me to leave the room...forever.
While the story of James' life on earth ends here, for others the stories will continue, thanks to organ donation and transplants. As he had helped others during his life, James will continue to help others through his death.
- A little six-year-old boy regained his eyesight and an ex-fireman has a younger and healthy heart.
- I have corresponded by mail and e-mail with the 37-year-old man who has one of James' kidneys. I hope someday we can meet each other, but right now we live too far away to do that.
- Last year at the annual Giving and Living Celebration at the Southwest Transplant Alliance, we met a woman who was 47 and near death when she received James' liver and other kidney. She told me when she was in her coma for over two months, she felt like she was on a ship in the middle of an ocean alone. She could hear people talking but they were far away. How can I adequately describe the feeling when we met? She was like meeting a long lost relative that I had never met before. It was wonderful and overwhelming. She is a precious lady who has had to battle with a tremendous amount of physical problems and has a young child at home.
Since James died, this shadow of sorrow sits on my shoulder, always there, whispering in my ear that he is dead. No one "gets over" the death of his or her child. We learn to live with the pain and adjust to this new normal way of life. I learned to work the computer, joined a monthly grief support group and joined an online support group of other donor moms. I also have become close friends with another mother whose 19-year-old son died two years ago and was also an organ donor. There was an instant bond between the two of us that bereaved parents all share. We had talked on the computer for seven months and then met each other last year at the Giving and Living Celebration, not knowing the other was going to be there.
I cried with her on the second anniversary of her son Jason's death out at the cemetery where he is buried, and now I am going to be able to rejoice with her at her up and coming wedding.
I am able to give newly bereaved parents a ray of hope that someday they will learn to smile again, for in the beginning it is impossible to believe.
Like many awaiting a transplant, or receiving one, my friend battled with guilt about the way she would get a kidney and pancreas (which she did, a year ago and is in wonderful health today) I told her it is not like she was praying for God to be a hit man and kill someone for her. It is just that when the inevitable happened, and someone died, that they would be organ donors and be a match for her. I told her my son James would have died whether or not we had donated his organs or not.
Donor families don't want recipients to feel guilty. Our family never hesitated with the decision to donate James' organs. Even if someone signs a donor card, it is ultimately up to the family whether or not their loved ones organs are donated. James' spirit was gone out of his body and his organs were now no use to him. I could not see burying organs that could help others to have a long healthy life, and keep their families from going through the pain of seeing a loved one die.
Love like you've never been hurt
Sing as if no one was listening
Dance like no one was watching
And live each day as if it were your last
