"The saving grace of emotional shock is that it allows you to manage the unimaginable."
On this clear, cold Saturday in late February, I find myself in a windowless room on the second floor of the Oakland Children’s Hospital. It is day three of Alice’s limbo between life and death. Just moments ago, in the ICU unit across the hall, the last doctor has performed the last test, confirming what the others had predicted. Everything that made Alice who she was, is now gone.
There are tubes and wires snaking around her body and machines softly humming beside her bed, perpetuating the cruel joke that she is still alive. Her body is warm. Her chest lifts and falls almost imperceptibly. Her heart still pumps out its stubborn little rhythm. But soon, within the hour perhaps, her brain will stop telling her body what to do and there is no procedure or trick or machine to fix that.
My sister Ruby sits beside me in this stark, serious room. A woman seated across the table reads from a list while the man at her side checks off items, one by one. There is a sense of urgency in their actions, but their voices remain calm and gentle. They could not be kinder while asking for the unimaginable. They have come, you see, in hopes of collecting the useful scraps, bits and pieces of the shell, which Alice has thoughtlessly left behind.
They tell me that I am brave and kind to make such a sacrifice. They thank me profusely. Despite their efforts, I am ashamed in some small way, each time I shake my head or say “no” to another item on their checklist. There is some part of me, which clings selfishly to some parts of her. Still, it is harder than I expected to be selfish with the specifics once the initial leap has been made.
I can give them her liver, her kidneys and pancreas; each one chosen for its own personal reason. I will give them her heart, but not her soul. Her lungs, but not the fire she breathed. I cannot give them her boldness and bravado, her hoarse laugh, her whip-smart tongue or her shit-eating grin. I cannot give them her surprising gushes of sweetness or her ten-second impromptu dance breaks. I could almost stand to give them her gray-green eyes, but for the fear that someone else might see the world as she often saw it, full of ugliness, shame and sorrow.
I have studied the expressions of the other parents in the elevator that brings us up to the ICU. Every one of us fragile, frayed and exhausted. Some stoic, others brimming with tears. Some haunted but most with at least a spark of something I recognize and immediately envy; a glimmer of hope..
If what we are doing here in this moment, with this last sacred act, can save one mother or father or brother from the reality that awaits us every day for the rest of our lives, how can we not do so? And if Alice can live on, not just in memory but in a body, which will be cherished and adored, pulled back from the edge of nothingness by her gift, how can I deny her that opportunity or them, that chance at another day?
I sit at this table in this windowless room, parting out my daughter’s body, organ by organ, and piece by precious piece. Later, they will tell us how some of her parts found new homes. Her heart is not among them. It did not survive the procedure. But perhaps, if I tell you that the giving of these gifts is one of the few things I did in those first days that I do not regret and would not change if given the chance, just maybe the next one will. In the end, hope is really the only thing we can pass on and hope is often the most precious thing we have.
[April is National Organ Donation Month. I remain in awe of the work being done by organizations like The California Transplant Network and encourage you to consider registering as an Organ Donor and promoting the gift of Hope today.]