transplantation – 9 Lives Notes

APRIL 23–Coincidences (?)

There are so many, and they have happened pretty much every day, this past year. Here are a couple of crazy ones.

When I announced, in September, that I would be writing my story in a more contained form, the universe seemed to lead me to Dani Shapiro, the author of many moving pieces of memoir and fiction. In November, I made plans to attend one of her small, women-only writing retreats.

There would be six other women in the group. As I was reading the other writers’ pages, before I left home, I wondered why the name of one woman, Julie Himes, was so familiar. Then I realized she was the author of the book sitting right beside me—-my book club’s pick for December. I emailed her to say hello and to remark upon the coincidence.

She wrote back with some equal amazement. In my pages, I had mentioned Vertex Pharmaceutical’s Kalydeco, the gene-correcting cystic fibrosis drug that might have changed Caitlin’s life, if she’d had access to it before her lung damage occurred. In addition to being a writer, the multi-talented Julie is also a research physician and a medical director at Vertex.

On the last night of that November retreat, Julie and the others were talking with great enthusiasm about Sirenland, an annual writer’s conference that Dani, Dani’s husband Michael Maren, and Hannah Tinti have been running in Positano, Italy for the past dozen years.

Long story short: I ended up attending Sirenland last month.

At Sirenland there are three small workshops, with ten writers in each one. I was part of Dani’s memoir workshop. Before I left home, I received the bound pages containing my group’s ten manuscripts. They were in alphabetical order.

I began to read the manuscripts, one per day. A few days before the conference, I was in London when I reached the end of the manuscript. W. David Weill. The name seemed familiar. I began to read. And stopped. I started talking to myself. What?? What is this??? Are you kidding me???

I called up to my friend who was traveling with me. You are not going to believe this.

David is a pulmonologist and was the medical director of the lung transplant and adult cystic fibrosis programs at Stanford University for years. His manuscript consisted of the first pages of a memoir he is writing about his complicated relationship with organ transplant.

I also realized why I recognized his name. I emailed the mother of Mallory Smith, the young woman from LA who also had to be transplanted in Pittsburgh, and who passed so tragically last November. Nick and I had just had dinner with Diane and her husband at their California home. I wrote, Is David Weill the Stanford lung doc friend you mentioned?

Yes, why?

And I told her and she said, Oh my God, Mallory did an edit of his book.

So yes, there was that.

Sirenland was an exceptional experience. And David is an exceptional person and I hope that his memoir will find many fascinated readers. He is now consulting, and working to address, as he puts it on his website, an important deficiency in transplant care: the lack of comprehensive quality information about transplant program performance. From his site: In the United States, there are hundreds of transplant programs performing thousands of solid organ transplants per year. Based on my own experiencing directing programs and evaluating them for public and private entities, I have seen that the quality of the programs varies considerably. This variability is usually not apparent to patients. The mission: Develop a scientifically reliable way to evaluate transplant program quality by using a variety of metrics that will be proposed and tested by experts in each of the four solid organ transplants (heart, liver, kidney, and lung). In order to achieve this mission, I have set up a non-profit entity called the Coalition for Transplant Program Evaluation (CTPE).

LRG_DSC00524 — Our magical workshop space at Le Sirenuse, Positano

The insanely beautiful view from my room at Le Sirenuse.

∞

As I neared the end of my week in Italy, I thought of all the trips that Caitlin and I had planned for “after transplant.” The last overseas trip she took was to Ireland for her 30th birthday. She traveled with Andrew and they visited her beloved family in Wexford–her grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins. It was a complicated trip, as that was the summer she began to catch one virus after another. By Christmas, she was on oxygen full-time and would never travel again.

I decided to take advantage of the fact that I was already “across the pond.” I had a ticket home from London but was able to change my departure date. I asked Nick to join me in England, to see, in honor of Caitlin, some places she longed to visit: Salisbury Cathedral, Stonehenge, Bath. He came and we saw those magnificent sites and he was also able to visit with old, close friends and also some Welsh cousins he had not seen for thirty (!) years.

We ended our week in London at the hotel where I twice stayed with Caitlin, most recently in 2012. I showed Nick around the enchanting public spaces and pointed out areas that held particularly vivid memories, like how one afternoon, in the lobby, I realized that the man sitting beside me on the sofa was Cuba Gooding, Jr and he was really sweet and funny and offered me a cake from his tiered tray, then basically shouted BOO! when I reached for one.

I showed him where Caitlin got into the taxi with her big suitcase full of oxygen and medical equipment that took her to the Chunnel train that brought her to Paris and the apartment where she so bravely spent a few long-dreamed-of weeks alone.

After we unpacked, we went down to the hotel’s spa. Nick went to the men’s changing area and I went to the women’s. We arranged to meet on the thermal floor.

Once inside the women’s area, the sights and spa smells were so immediately familiar. How could six years have passed? Caitlin was almost there, a shimmering memory in robe and slippers. I allowed myself a moment, thinking, The last time I was here, Caitlin was alive and my book was about to come out, and Cuba Gooding, Jr gave me a piece of cake. Life was pretty good.

Then I went down to the thermal floor to look for Nick. It’s kind of dark there and I couldn’t see him, but suddenly he came out of a door, followed by a man. Look who I found! he said, and it was Cuba, wrapping me in a big hug, saying he was so sorry for the loss of Caitlin, and then he was gone, and my head was spinning a bit. Still is.

–Maryanne

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FEBRUARY 8 — St. John Onward

I haven’t been blogging because I am focused on writing “the Caitlin book,” but we are on our family’s beloved island of St. John right now, and it seems a good time to say hello.

In 2014 (4 years ago, how can that be??), we had a big trip to St. John planned. I had rented our favorite villa. It sat on a hilltop looking down over the Caneel Bay resort peninsula. These photos really do not do credit to the view.

Andrew and Katie and Alvaro would be joining us. We had “boat day,” our favorite day of vacation, all booked with our captain, John Brandi.

On Christmas Day, as Katie and I talked in our hyped-up, excited way about the trip plans, I remember reading Caitlin’s face. She knew, as she would later tell me, that things had changed irrevocably for her, that there was no way she was going to be able to go. I remained in desperate denial for a couple of weeks but at one point, I said to Katie, “She’s either going to get better, like she always has, or we are entering a whole new place with this disease.”

A year and a half later, I wrote:

We are still waiting. There is that hope that a year from now everything will be normal again, or better than normal. St. John seems like the paradise it’s always been, even more so now that it is out of reach.

Everyone knows how much we love St. John. The highlight of our trips are always our days on the water, zipping around the BVIs. Over the past decade, we always went with our favorite captain—the vivacious, enthusiastic, safe, and professional Captain John Brandi. John and his wife Sue had long dreamed of retiring to St. John, and when they moved down from Marblehead in 2005, they launched Palm Tree Boat Charters. Canceling “boat day” was without a doubt the most depressing part of canceling our annual trip two winters ago, when Caitlin first got sick. And then late last year, a startling post appeared on our Facebook feeds: a sudden announcement, by John, that “due to health issues,” he was selling his beloved boat.

It turned out that back pain that had been niggling at him all year was actually cancer; the world lost him last week. The outpouring of sorrow on St. John has been both wonderful to see and terribly heartbreaking. Everyone loved him, and of course, everyone’s memories of him are wrapped in their own memories of happy, happy days. As I’ve cried for him, I know I’ve also been crying for myself. Some days are just well and truly over, and there’s nothing to be done about that, except to say “onward,” and make these new days the best they can be.

Godspeed, Captain Brandi.

Last winter, Nick and I could not yet bear the thought of visiting St. John, but this past summer, we decided we would go in January. In early September, I began looking for a small villa for the two of us. I planned that we would spend part of the vacation in a villa and part at Caneel Bay. I’d only begun my research when the hurricane warnings started. Then Irma hit. And a week later, Maria. Two Cat 5 hurricanes that tore through these islands, sucking away every bit of vegetation.

That house I loved? Roof ripped off, the insides destroyed:

A couple of restaurants we’d been visiting since the 1990s? Flattened. Gone. Caneel Bay was closed, with no opening date in sight.

With such a huge recovery effort, there seemed no possibility of us going, so we didn’t plan to. But recently, friends who live here urged us to visit. “We are getting back on our feet. The beaches are still beautiful, restaurants are now open, there are places to stay! We need tourists/visitors/customers!”

So we are here. Our longtime island friends Delbert & Delrise are hosting us in their beautiful 8-unit vacation-rental condominium building on Turner Bay, Seashore Allure. I’m listening to the tranquilizing crash of the ocean as I write this.

Every single meal we’ve eaten has been extraordinarily good. Maybe because the chef/owners are actually cooking every night…. I don’t know. But La Tapa, Extra Virgin, The Longboard, The Terrace, Greengos, Cruz Bay Landing…all are consistently fantastic.

Our friends Ruth and Ron, who own the great little shop St. John Spice are back in business, resilient, like the rest of the locals who love this island. We had dinner with the lovely Karen, who gifted us with a beautiful piece of heart-shaped coral for the mausoleum. Her Treetops B&B sustained very little damage and is welcoming vacationers again.

Every morning, Nick and I have hiked the Lind Point trail into Honeymoon Beach and had it all to ourselves for at least an hour. It’s like being back in the 1990s, when we first started coming here, when Caitlin was little and we fell in love with this place.

Nick has been taking pictures of the beautiful island stonework as he prepares to build the mausoleum come spring. He returned from a walk near the island cemetery one morning, enthusiastic about a beautiful tomb he’d seen. The stone is the classic St. John stone and brick combination, and he pointed out the beautiful blue glass heart.

Being here has been strange, sad, surreal, lovely. It’s weird to see photos of us smiling, when two minutes earlier we were all choked up. But that’s how it goes. It’s also been really good. Just this morning, we talked about how last March, we were at a hotel in Vero Beach, Florida, and it seemed like we were surrounded by happy families with kids and grand-kids, and it was all a reminder of what we no longer had. Here, as in California last month, we are reminded that we are not the only ones who’ve borne hardships, and that honestly does make you feel better… sad to say.

We rather bravely decided to do our own quiet little “boat day,” with Cleve, the sweetest guy and a really good captain. Local Flavor is his boat. We got a water’s edge view of so much of the damage. Gorgeous Caneel Bay looks like a place abandoned after an apocalypse.

Word is it will likely won’t reopen until 2021.

We headed over to Jost van Dyke, where the damage was extensive. Here is a picture from ten years ago, when we had lunch at Foxy’s Taboo with Kitten and Katie and Kate’s parents, two of our oldest and dearest friends.

Foxy’s Taboo, now:

For those who know Jost: Sydney’s harbor is trashed. Disappeared houses in one spot, untouched houses right “next door.” People are living in tents.

On Great Harbor, the sandy Main Street looks so bright, so exposed. Very few trees left standing. The roof and windows of the pretty little church were blown out, but the congregation has erected a tent and set up chairs and a pulpit there.

Vendors are open, selling water and rum punch and painkillers and chicken roti and Johnny Cakes. Original Foxy’s is in good shape. And this survived there:

Foxy is some kind of Trump supporter (yikes/eek/#toomuchrum) and wearing a Trump hat and pin, but he’s still singing.

We ended boat day, as we always have, on White Bay. A photograph of the Soggy Dollar was one of the first photos I saw, post-Irma. STILL STANDING, they had posted.

We knew they were open but weren’t sure what to expect.

It’s rebuilt and a bit roomier for the workers and visitors, and it looks great! They’re planting 100+ palm trees all the way down the beach and into the other harbor.

Jess’s sister Carly’s friend Annie is a manager at the Soggy Dollar. Her parents own the place. After Caitlin’s service, Annie arranged an “organ donor awareness” day there, on New Year’s, 2017. They used a photo of Caitlin and Andrew, taken there in 2013.

While we were there, we suddenly remembered that Annie was probably on the property. Nick went to look for her.

Annie is one lovely person. So warm and kind. We learned that her family lost her beloved brother CJ six years ago.

Her parents live on St. John and we hoped we would run into them, and St. John, being such a small island…well, of course we ran into her dad and other brother a day or so later.

As talk progressed, we realized that the beautiful tomb that Nick had admired and photographed was CJ’s, the blue glass heart one of the favors at his island wedding. Another coincidence, one of many.

RIP, CJ O’Connell and Caitlin O’Hara.

APRIL 6–Master of the Suck-It-Up Smile

A courageous ray of light..

Caitlin’s cousin Melissa is a sweet and noble soul, and her write-up for the “Xtreme Hike” (30 miles in one day) that she is training for in honor of Caitlin, to raise $$ for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, both breaks my heart and uplifts it at once.

Caitlin was ‘a courageous ray of light,’ she writes, and this photo, from Melissa’s wedding day, reminds me of just how true that was.

The wedding had been planned for months. We were hosting the ceremony at our house, under the beautiful willow tree by our river. Caitlin would be a bridesmaid.

But just before the wedding, Caitlin got sick. She had to start one of her 3-week courses of IV antibiotics. Besides being sick enough to need 3 weeks of IV meds, taking them always knocked her flat. Typically, there was a 1-hour infusion of one heavy-duty antibiotic every 8 hours, plus a 4pm-ish dose of another one—- usually the worst one—- the one that would really make the nausea kick in and make her lie down and say, ‘Suddenly I feel awful!’ As if she was surprised. Even though it happened every day.

‘Suddenly’ had become a joke, a word we used whenever we wanted to indicate we weren’t feeling well during a time when of course we weren’t feeling well.

But this particular June, she worried. She didn’t want to let Melissa down, but she also didn’t know how she would ever make it through the day: the morning preparations that would be taking place in our house, the ceremony itself with all that standing, the 4pm infusion and then the hours of the reception.

But make it through the day she did. And aside from the telltale bandage that always covered her IV lines, she never let on that she felt like anything other than the supportive bridesmaid and loving cousin that she was. Because she didn’t want any attention on herself, and especially didn’t want Melissa to worry about her, or feel bad, in any way, on her wedding day.

Sweet Melissa (yep, named after the Allman Brothers song by my hippie-ish brother Billy, her dad), is grateful for the support she’s received for this hike. She’s psyched to do it, and she’s training hard. It happens in June.

Caitlin had really hoped to participate in these kinds of fundraisers after transplant. She had hoped to do a lot of things. Hike. Run again. Climb stairs.

But let’s not forget that she did get to do a lot of things, like live beyond birth, that a CF kid 50 or 100 or many more years ago would never have been able to do, thanks to all the research that so quickly benefited her after her diagnosis, and which continues to benefit other sweet and wonderful beings.

Life expectancy, in general—-well, here you go:

Screen Shot 2017-04-06 at 6.18.34 PM.png — *Seize the day, my friends*

It will be fascinating to see what the future holds. We are still so primitive in so many ways.

❤

–M

JANUARY 1–Everybody Sees the Wind Blow

I have been sending Caitlin text messages:

I love you.

Where are you?

I love you.

Before that, when she was mostly unconscious in the ICU, I would write, I miss you, bud. So many things I go to tell you, just dumb things, like Pup. Puppetypuppup. I’m sending these now for us to laugh at later.

Caitin’s name was always at the top of my iMessage window. It seems weird to have to scroll down, down, down to find her. When I look backward through our exchanges, I see that one of her last real ones to me was after she sent her last text for me to post, on December 3.

This person who thought it might be awful to beg for people to pray for her….How did she come to be such an angel?

When you have a sick child, as we did for 31 years, you know you may someday have to face the loss of that child. Your mind sometimes peers at ‘the worst,’ and although you quickly slam the door, painful stuff seeps in through the cracks.

I always knew I would likely outlive Caitlin. And always knew, on one level, that Queen’s “These are the days of our lives” would be a part of a film tribute that my brother Michael would eventually create in her honor. I could never really listen to that song, though I loved it. Still, for all the bracing I had done all her life, I always had faith we had more time. So it was numbing and heavy to plan a service and create a program for that service—something that had to be real and special and unique. To choose the music and photos for Michael’s film tribute.

As I said in an earlier post, Caitlin wanted a mausoleum. Who, these days, wants a mausoleum? And who knew that just three miles from our home was a gorgeous little garden cemetery, built in the 1800s and modeled after Mt. Auburn Cemetery, that offered a mausoleum and gorgeous chapel? We never knew it was there, but it was/is so perfect it could have been built to Caitlin’s specifications.

She liked cemeteries, found them peaceful. When she was at BC, she would often go to the beautiful Newton Cemetery to study and read. “I visited my friends today,” she would joke.

My brother Michael has long created what we all jokingly, in our family, call “tearjerkers,” films that capture family, friends, lost days. This was his hardest tearjerker yet, he said. He could hardly look at the photos while making it (and my goodness, he put it together in a flash). Uncle Mike and Caitlin shared a special bond, always, but especially in the past two years when he had helped out, so much, with her Prouty Garden fight.

The service on Friday was all Caitlin, exactly as she would have wished. Emotional, personal, beautiful. The chapel was stunning, with its soaring, painted ceiling and exquisite stained glass windows. Large portraits, printed by her special buddy Billy Duffey, graced the walls.

fullsizerender-jpg — *The early Christian art lover in Caitlin loved this service, I know. St. Kitten.*

The space looked like a sacred art gallery. We read poetry in unison. Gary Richardson played slow-tempo acoustical guitar pieces, including a version of Silent Night that he arranged just for her. Many of her close friends spoke, and as they spoke, they all stood so exceptionally strong and tall—-heartbroken even as they summoned the courage to be articulate and passionate. They inspired all of us, especially me, as they spoke to Caitlin’s depth of character. Such wonderful people. As Nick always said, “To meet a friend of Caitlin’s is to meet Caitlin.” Her cousin Jillian spoke for everyone when she said:

When I think of Caitlin’s incredible spirit, there is one particular story that is so deeply ingrained in my memory that it positively shoots to the forefront of my mind’s eye and takes the stage. During visits with my Oma, Brigitte Kelsey, throughout my life, she would always make a point to inquire about my cousin, Caitlin. How is your cousin Caitlin? She would ask. Admittedly, I disliked when most people would ask me this question. The air of pity bothered me, something about it sounded like they were making Caitlin out to be a victim; it felt dooming. I would generally answer in as positive a light as possible. “She’s doing really well”, or “she’s had a tough year but she’s getting much better”, or the fast and deflective “she’s doing well, how are you?” These were my go-to responses to most other people. But my Oma was different. She’d lived through the war, she’d had everything taken from her and she had lived on. Her voice didn’t carry the sound of pity, but of honor. She honored Caitlin. I always answered her honestly, and I always knew that following my answer would come the same tried and true story that would over the years, and dozens of re-tellings firmly assert a particular image of Caitlin in my mind. “I always remember”, she would say, “that day of your baptism. She was running through the church, screaming and laughing and causing a ruckus. She was a wild child. I always liked her.”

Something inside Caitlin just positively glowed. And it’s that glow that I want to talk about. I want to talk about that wild spirit, that bearer of light… that lion-hearted woman, the Leo that she was. It seems to me that Caitlin came into this world as a great bearer of light. And it also seems to me that her light grew as her health struggles grew. And it seems that her light is now stronger than ever, because it’s filling this room.To me, Caitlin more than any other person that I’ve known, inspires me to live life to the fullest. From the day she was born, supposedly, her breaths were numbered. Her diagnosis at two years old let her parents know that her breaths may be numbered. And it seems to me that she made sure that every breath she took was lived as fully as possible.

This is a woman who traveled extensively despite her illness, who brought into her life the kind of deep and loving friendships that have the mark of soul-relationships, who spent her last several years with this incredible man who loved her so deeply and fully, who supported her on her highest path, in her utmost truth. And so, I feel like the gift that Caitlin has brought to us all is the reminder, and even the urging, to live life fully, to not waste a single breath. And if we do waste breath, to not waste more in mourning it, but to forgive ourselves, to forgive others. Kindness and compassion, truth and love, these are what she brought to us as our friend, cousin, niece, daughter and partner.

33 years is just a wrinkle in time, and yet 33 years, if every moment is infinite, is different. When you really think about the depth and fullness of a moment shared in a kiss or a cuddle, in the taste of fresh fruit in the summertime, in the stillness and calm of a rainy day spent watching out the window, or the long hours sitting beside someone you love in a hospital bed… when you think about feeling compassion for another human… none of those moments are contained by time. They are fluid and vague and full and they are what life is all about. And so, Caitlin had 33 years in this life. Maybe some of us have 80, or 50 years, maybe some of us have less, or more than we think. But it doesn’t really matter when you are living life to its fullest. If every moment is infinite. And if you live the way you truly want to live: courageously, with an open heart, focused on compassion and love, generosity… when you invite only positive loving relationships into your life… when you invite in only the experiences that hold you in your essence… then maybe 33 years could be enough, if they have to be.

I trust that Caitlin is on her highest healing path and I trust that she is there watching all of us, saying “please laugh at least as much as you cry.” Life is too good to waste a single breath.

My understanding from conversations I’ve had with Caitlin and also with Maryanne, is that Caitlin was very spiritual, but did not ascribe to any religion. She was more pantheistic. Similarly to how she loved us, she saw and loved the best and what was good, in all religions. I understand that she had always felt an affinity for the Virgin Mary, and I have been asked to lead everyone in a recitation of the Hail Mary prayer in honor of her special connection with the great Mother. As we recite this prayer together now, I invite you to be present with the words as we would be in the reading of a poem, to reflect on the spirit of Mary.

You may click here for the PDF of the service program: Caitlin’s Service Program

And you may click here for Uncle Mike’s live-stream of the service, the recording of which is still available on Facebook:

At the end of the service, Uncle Mike’s film tribute plays for 9 minutes. You can also view it on YouTube: Film tribute

Back at our house, on Friday evening, we lit our traditional holiday barrel full of firewood out on the patio. We burned sparklers and raised them and looked up at the sky. There were a lot of shooting stars that night: quick flashes among the old familiars that calm humans with their always-presence: Castor and Pollux. Orion.

We have received so many messages from old friends, new friends, and perfect (wonderful) strangers. We are so grateful for every word. One particular message, from an old high school friend of Caitlin’s, particularly struck me. He articulated so well what so many people have said about our amazing Caitlin. I have his permission to quote his words here:

Maryanne, I hope you don’t find it forward of me to reach out during such a time of mourning. I read the Herald piece and could strongly relate to your sentiment, “Every friend of hers considered Caitlin his or her best friend.”

Caitlin was always there for me and will always occupy a special place in my heart. Because she was so kind, caring and strong and it made it all too difficult to overlook just how much she had to grapple with. It is humbling and awe-inspiring to read your accounts of how much she quietly struggled and persevered time and time again.

Caitlin touched my life as she did so many others. Her willingness to put others’ need above her own, her caring nature is something I had the benefit of experiencing. In very trying times, she was there for me in a way that no one else would or could be. It is hard to put into words just how much that means. It is clear from the accounts of many others that I was not unique in this regard. What a wonderful gift for all who knew her.

Thank you for raising such a wonderful person. I will carry Caitlin in my heart always. She was a true friend. As you wrote, “All loves are ill-starred, because all are made of time.”

Caitlin was a wise, old soul. Her decency showed a worldliness beyond her years. She had a taste for joy and understanding of suffering. There was an undeniable soulfulness to her, the kind of depth that almost serves as proof of higher beings and callings. Such qualities cannot be measured in time.

We may have met only once or twice while Caitlin and I were at Saint Mark’s, but you are in my thoughts and prayers. Another being touched by your daughter and mourning her deeply.

-Alex Fekula

Thank you, Alex. And everyone who has reached out.

We are now into a new year. 2017. Our first without Caitlin, in three decades. We are sick with grief and I can attest that true grief is a sickness unlike any other. Everybody sees you’re blown apart/Everybody sees the wind blow, sang Paul Simon. But—-but—-but—-the love and comfort of our family and friends has been a wonderful thing. You would think that the holidays would be the worse time to lose a person, but the timing all turned out to be a strange kind of blessing, because everyone was able to be around for so long. We are two weeks into this now, and we have never been alone, will never be alone. Thank you.

🙏

–Maryanne

PS:

Caitlin was shamelessly sentimental about animals and people in need. She couldn’t pass a homeless person without digging in her purse. She always contributed to good causes with no reservations. Here are two charities she fully supported which you may also consider supporting in her honor:

prisonbookprogram.org

gentlebarn.org

May 27 – The Start of Summer, & Waiting

We’ve been getting a lot of questions that make us realize that the average person doesn’t realize just how scarce organs are. But scarcity is why people wait so long, and generally have to be far sicker than they need to be before surgery. Last year, donations of all organs were, unfortunately, down in the United States.

I’ve been an organ donor since the day I received my first driver’s license at age 16. Donation has always made complete sense to me, and now that we are on the needing end, I can’t imagine the trauma of knowing that there would be no hope if transplantation was not an option, if organ donation did not exist.

Many years ago, we lost Nick’s brother Willie to a brain aneurysm. A young man that stood tall and seemingly healthy was with us one morning, gone by evening. Willie had a one-year old daughter. His wife was pregnant with their son. The only positive thing that came out of that awful tragedy was that seven people were saved and helped via the gift of life from Willie.

From the Mayo Clinic, here is some comforting talk about the myths of organ donation: http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/consumer-health/in-depth/organ-donation/art-20047529

You have to make a bit of an effort to be a donor, but only a bit. Here’s how:

❤ First, sign up with your state’s donor registry: http://www.organdonor.gov/becomingdonor/stateregistries.html

❤ Designate your decision on your driver’s license.

❤ Tell your family about your decision. It’s important that they know your wishes.

❤ Tell your physician and friends.

❤ Include donation in your will, etc.

The first step is vital, and you can do it right now.

–Maryanne