Organs Of Donation

I did not consider myself of mother potential. Was there a particular reason? Probably several, but the most important one lay somewhere between selfishness and fear. What's it all about, mama----er, non-mama? Well, I whispered to the ethos, I do not know and I do not care to know.

Past thirty and traveling unencumbered along a path that seemed at least vaguely like the one I'd imagined, everything changed. I was a hiker who failed to heed obvious natural warnings of hazardous terrain ahead. I slipped. Cue John Lennon lyric: life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. Let's not get into a bog. I'll just tell it like it is, which is that within a certain twenty-eight month period, I simply changed my mind. I became a mother. To someone else's child.

The child, Kinsey, was six years old. You know things by then. You know that your mom is gone, your dad is here, and there's somebody who's not your mom reading you stories at night. It has to be confusing, but kids----given the time and space and respect----can work through it much better than adults I think. He watched me. Maybe because he loved his father so much, he gave me a better chance than I deserved. I stumbled along, more than surprised to find it wasn't so weird standing in for a mother. Fake mother.

It was only awkward when he asked about his mother. I didn't know why she didn't take him places. Hardly ever called. Saw him only when we suggested he visit of we were off for a weekend. The more I knew of him, the more I wondered myself how she could not want to spend every moment possible with this amazing, sweet blue-eyed angel. Oh. We became such friends, Kinsey and I. We made things for his ma. Friends are not threatening. They are co-conspirators, allies. Confidantes.

He asked me during a GI Joe battle. It might have been any question, but it was not just any question. He asked me if he could still love his mom if he loved me, too. Oh, the unmotherly spirit within me! She had to hold steady to navigate that one. Kinsey, at seven years old, was already a seasoned commander.

She called me once in the early days. Kinsey was everything, she said. Everything she had in the world. Yes, I assured her, he would always be her son and I would protect and care for him.

If he yearned for her, he kept it to himself. They established a new relationship when he became a young adult. By then, he'd learned the Vodka Stumble himself. Maybe, in some way, it provided him away in. A glimpse is preferable to absence.

She called me sister. How could I not respond? There were tearful phone conversations, the content varied and often garbled. Always, we had this common place, a sacred circle. Kinsey.

When she became ill, all her ghosts of her self-inflicted punishment fell upon her together. Smoking, drinking, narcotics. Bodies eventually succumb to their sorrows.

She what nothing to live for, she declared. Life had amounted to nothing at all. The party was over and so was she, that's what she said. And then she changed her mind. Kinsey. I recognized it in her eyes when I visited.

It's hard to hide stuff from your sister.

There are things about organ transplant that you might not think about until you are immersed in a kind of place where it matters. Like when you think you're dying and you think you've accepted that but then you change your mind. Then you realize, with some desperation and panic, that there are possibilities. People offer you these things, these second chances.

But it means someone else dies and you benefit from the end of their life. You take what's leftover, what still functions. Who is it? What was their spirit like? Who do they leave behind? What level of generosity does it take of the donor or the surviving family to allow such a gifting of possible life to transpire?

And how do you get yourself well enough so that you deserve this chance? How do you prepare for it? You're ready----or in your mind desperate enough, clinging now with bloody fingers to the edge of the life you thought you'd be willing to surrender---but your body is scarred, beaten and sick from a lifetime of good times. What God can you pray to bring the miracle you desire so deeply you are blind with wanting?

It takes so long, but there are so many on the team. Blood takers. Pulse checkers. Injection givers. Preparatory meds. Experts. Serious, knowledgeable, skilled people cheering for you.

Almost two years before the miracle call. Someone has died. Don't think about who...think life! Everything blurred. Pain. Bloat. Pills. Lights. Yellow skin. White coats. Black magic. Recovery. Slow. Long days. She is