Leaving your mark on the world

Dude, I’m tellin’ ya………

I’ve had some exposure recently to a few situations and conversations about a topic most people probably wouldn’t connect with being something I really believe in. I’m talking about being an organ donor.

I really don’t exactly know why I feel rather strongly about it. I really don’t. There’s two reasons that might be why. 

One is that I’ve had many, many friends pass away over the last 23 years or so. More than average for not being a gang banger in a terrible neighborhood or socioeconomic situation. Way more than just average attrition. Many were definately brought on by the deceased person himself. My twenties and thirties were chock full of over-indulgence and bad decisions. We put ourselves at risk weekly. Associated with some really dangerous people. The truth is, there’s been a number of situations where I was lucky to make it back home with my life many nights. Terrible driving decisions, having guns pointed at me, dangerous and nasty fights / confrontations, and the forementioned over-indulgences.

And then there are the usual mishaps that any of us are prone too……spinning a 360 on the expressway in snowy, slick conditions, a handful of car accidents that you had absolutely no fault in, an appendix I tried to “tough out” until it nearly burst……

So I’ve lost a good 22-24 friends under the age of 45 since I myself was about eighteen. Which wasn’t all that long ago. They perished due to drug overdoses, suicides, drunken driving accidents, etc. And then a couple succumbed to disease such as cancer, and in one case, the respiratory failings and seizures that resulted from a long-ago gunshot wound. 

This is one reason that comes to mind as to why I might give such a strong endorsement to organ donation. But then again, very few of these friends could have been saved thru some sort of donation. Their deaths were pretty instant in most cases. Even with my father very ill right now and hospitalized again (still), he isn’t in any need of any organ transplant. So I’m not so sure this is the driving force behind my position.

What I really DO think is the main thrust behind why I think just about all of us should be donors is simply that it is the right thing to do. 

Plain and simple. What the hell are we trying to hold on to?

When I do head off to the next dimension; the other side…..whatever that may be……I don’t want a big funeral and I don’t want my surviving loved ones to dish out a bunch of money on a casket and a burial plot for the whole ceremony / ritual thing most people do. If other people desire that kind of sendoff, I have no problem with that. By all means, honor a person’s final wishes and put them to rest in the manner they wanted. Absolutely no problem with that.

But I myself am not much for religion. In a very two-faced, contradictory statement, if there is a heaven out there—-I hope to be invited in and spend the rest of eternity there. I just don’t want my family to spend a ton of money on all of the pomp and circumstance that is a formal funeral.

Give all of my functional and useful organs to sick people that need them. And then cremate me and drop my ashes over Soldier Field or US Cellular Field in Chicago. Or at most, take a helicopter ride over the Strip in Las Vegas and scatter my ashes over Sin City. But first and foremost, give my organs to suffering people.

Anything that someone could use…..my eyes, my lungs, my kidneys, my heart. You can try and give someone my liver, but I’m not so sure it would be better than the one they already have. That particular organ of mine has quite a bit of mileage on it.

I don’t need any of that stuff anymore. Some of the living still do. Give it to ’em.

Some people say that they won’t (or can’t) be a donor for religious reasons. But one of the exposures I recently had on this subject seemed to make a really, really good point. If you are a religious person and embrace the virtues of being kind to others…..to sharing…..to treating your fellow man with dignity and respect……to making the world a better place…..etc.

What greater gift could you give your fellow man? What act could be more generous and selfless? What greater legacy could you possibly leave this world than to help another human being live a long, healthy life?

I always wanted to write the next great American novel. Or be some sort of prolific writer that left a library of material for future generations to learn from and appreciate. I wanted to do something that would have an impact. It doesn’t look like that is going to happen. I’m not going to be a doctor or researcher that cures a terrible disease. Or a fireman that saves many lives over the course of his career. I’m not going to discover the next great energy source or win a monumental civil rights case before the Supreme Court.

So what the hell can I do to just leave the slightest trace that I was once here on this planet? And that I did at least one worthwhile thing? To have an impact?

I can donate my organs to people that desperately need them.

Even if I was a great writer like J.D. Salinger or Hemingway, leaving a collection of great stories in my wake isn’t enough. If I was a great painter, leaving a handful of masterpieces wouldn’t be enough. But if a seriously ill teenager received my kidneys or lungs and lived to be 69, now there would be something that trumps those other things. At least to me.

So I’m a donor and I encourage everyone to seriously consider it. Believe me, you won’t feel a thing when it happens. If you do believe in any sort of afterlife where a higher power than yourself will pass judgement on you, what better achievement could you have on your resume?

Give it a thought. Just consider it. Talk about it with your family. 

Perhaps one of them will be the eventual recipient. Your (currently) young nephew or niece. One of your own granchildren a long time from now.

How ’bout that?