How many of us are organ donors?

And if you are, how certain are you that your loved ones know your wishes?

I want to share something I experienced, in case anybody ever goes through this, you can be nice and ready.

My wife Karen died on August 23rd, 2008, 4:05AM.

Sometime around 9am, they came and zipped her up in a bag.  It was the most horrible blasted thing I have ever seen.  Seeing her put into a damn bag and zipped up like luggage.  If I ever live through this again, I will leave the house when the guy comes.  I would highly recommend that my readers do the same.  Highly.

Anyway, as you can imagine, this really screwed with my brain.  I started freaking out as soon as they took her.  I tried calling the mortician to tell him that maybe I made a mistake and that Karen wasn't dead and can you please take her out of that &%$@# bag right now?  Please!!!

He wasn't having any of that.  I actually begged him to bring her body back to me so I could triple-check myself.  Again, he refused.  I panicked.  I honestly believed that Karen might still be alive and that I didn't properly check her pulse.  My anxiety was through the roof.  I felt like I gave my wife away like used trash.  It was traumatic. 

I am not going for sympathy here, I just need to set up the story.

Around 10am, I received a phone call from-- who I thought-- was a telemarketer.  I almost went crazy on this poor lady.

It turned out that she was a surgeon and she called to ask if I would donate Karen's eyes to a blind child.  The mortician must have alerted her that they had a fresh body and so she called me right away.

Although I am an organ donor myself and it says so on my driver's license and license plate...Karen and I didn't actually have a set plan in place regarding organ donation.  Not because we didn't plan ahead though.  This is because Karen had cancer, so 99% of her body would have been useless anyway.  We never considered the eyes.

Now when somebody calls you 6 hours after the love of your life dies and asks to remove their eyeballs-- your first instinct might be to kill them.  That was I wanted to do.

How dare they bother me!

So I yelled at her:  "Why are you calling me?  Are you kidding me with this right now?  Leave me alone for goodness sakes!"  (Okay, maybe my language was a bit more...uh...flowery at the time.)

She was very patient and understanding and she told me how a child was waiting for a set of eyes and that Karen's corneas would be of the utmost importance to a very grateful family.

So I told her to take the eyes and my heart broke in two.

It may not seem like it-- especially since Karen and I were organ donors-- but that was a very hard thing to do.  The reason is because once you give permission for somebody to harvest your loved one's organs, you are really going to need to accept the fact that they are truly gone.

I asked her if she would please put something in the sockets, so that her eyes didn't look odd for the viewing.  She assured me she would.

Anyway.  The reason I write this post is because I was about * this * close to screaming at this woman and slamming the phone down.  However, now that a year has passed, I am so very glad about it.  Karen would have wanted me to do the donation thing.

So if a loved one dies, and they want to donate their organs-- just know that there is more to it.  They still need permission, even if the dearly departed signed the form.  They could have changed their mind.  So they have to call and bother you and you will have to deal with it.

You just need to keep it together long enough to deal with this final thing.  Then you can go back to freaking the heck out.

That's it.  I am writing about this for another project; so while I was on the topic, I thought I would post.  I really hope this helps somebody else to make a decision on such an awful day as this.