the road to a cause

There are many life experiences that make us take up "the cause." Politics? JFK. Civil rights? MLK. Drunk driving deaths? Candy Lightner, who founded MADD in 1980 in honor of her daughter, Cari, who was killed by a drunk driver. Killer diseases? Michael J. Fox became a spokesman for Parkinson's disease. Spinal cord injuries? Think Superman!

Organ donation? That would be me. I am asking you, reminding you to fill out the form on your driver's license that indicates that you are willing to be an organ donor. My beloved sister was on a kidney transplant list for nine years, NINE YEARS. A transplant might have saved her life. It might have given her a quality of life she had not enjoyed since 2000. Your used organs ~ heart, kidney, liver, corneas ~ might be of life-saving importance to another man or woman. Really, you will be dead. What use can you possibly have for those body parts? But others who receive them may live on. If you have hesitated to check the "Be an organ donor" box on your license, hesitate no longer. You can give someone life. Think about it.

This has been a terrible day. A terrible, terrible day. Weeping, memories, smiles, weeping, photos, letters, weeping, phone calls, emails, and still more weeping. Even though I know she had decided this was her time, and I have no argument with her decision, I will mourn her. We had a wonderful life together as sisters. Here's what I will really miss, though. When she would telephone me or I called her, we would say, in a high, falsetto voice mimicking Walter Matthau's in "Hopscotch" greeting his spy partner, Glenda Jackson, "Helloooo? This is Eleanor Roooosevelt!" No one will ever say that to me again. Now that's what I'll miss.