Anatomical donation

“Where will we plant him?” Says my 6 year old.

“I don’t know that he is going to be planted, he isn’t really the being planted type.” I say.

Just a typical chat that lead to an explanation of where he will go. My dad didn’t want to be wasted. Or planted. His life lived with such purpose that he felt maybe he should continue it on. He would be anatomically donated. Given to science. His last wish. Not planted.

When he was a baby he was always sick. Always sick as a child. Always sick as a teenager. Then an adult. Just always coughing and struggling to breath, fighting colds like they were going to kill him.

He wasn’t officially diagnosed with his genetic disease of alpha-1 antitripsene until later in life. He researched himself and found himself a place in Colorado who would finally diagnose him with this. His liver was not making the protein to protect his liver and lung from diseases. He wasn’t a smoker and suffered from COPD. In the end he would require a new liver. He had developed primary liver cancer.

None of our family could donate. A few unrelated family were tested. He was put on a list to wait for a donor.

We met his living donor through my sister at work. She said “I’ve just always wanted to do this.” Who says that? Luckily I suppose not everyone and luckily not everyone needs it said to them. So she gave over half of her liver to him.

That was just a quick sum of an unsummable event.

We had to go to the funeral home to make arrangements. I got there first. Which left me with the uncomfortable task of socializing from a distance with people who’s job is ran off of loss. There business is booming right now? Do funeral homes like “slow days?” Or “busy days?” Or do they have these kinds of days. Like my dad would say, “people are dying to get in there!”

I recognized artificial floral arrangements from where I work. The lady in white kept moving one of them. And straightening pamphlets. I noticed she was counting them. To make sure they had the same amount in each slot? They had perfect rows. Just the right amount of grief pamphlets to make a perfect square. I sort of wondered if there was actually too many and this was switched out often to accommodate all the pamphlets without having to awkwardly display some laying flat on a table. Those would look to be the primary pamphlets to look through. The most difficult grief, or the easiest? Her counting and busy body energy was bothering me. I wanted to scramble them up. Or turn them upside down. Can you handle your grief upside down? Is this a pamphlet too?

My mom was late, she went to the wrong home. She went to where her parents are buried. Was this automatic? She needed her mom and dad right now? I told the suit man, he looked stupefied. Like how could you mess this up? I began to over talk. Over share. Fill the space with reasons she messed up. He loosened his tie. He offered me water. He squirmed. I make people squirm. They don’t know how to exit conversations with me because they don’t have a chance to usually say so and they don’t know what to say to get me to stop. So I just talked for 20 minutes about why my mom was late.

He asked us about 6 questions. All of which we failed at answering. His dads name? Grandpa. Right. No. He has a couple, they sound the same. Lloyd? Lowell? Which order do they go in? Why does he have two names that sound so similar and also so odd said together? He never really clarified his name and later in life he decided to switch. We googled him.

His moms name? Shit. Did she use a capital J in the middle of her name? Was it two words?

Occupation? How much space do you have? Um, not a lot. Ok we will pick one. Which one? Carpenter? No piano tuner? No carpenter? How do you write both without explaining why both are written?

Why were we so bad at this? He continued to ask questions we didn’t answer right. He also didn’t look surprised we couldn’t. He’s done this. He’s read all his own pamphlets to understand we are in the early stage of grief. The one that leaves you shocked, the one that feels final but imaginary still. We can’t answer because we don’t know it’s that we don’t want to know. The brain says “I’m sorry I can’t give you this important information right now, I’m busy keeping it from you.”

He is leaving today April 7th for his last ride to Chicago. We had a very sensitive time constraints to achieve this. He did not pass from the virus so he was taken. It had to happen quickly. They will take him to a medical facility to be used to learn things. He was a medical mystery. His will to live outweighed his bodies fight to try and retire. Until they caught up to each other.

Anatomical donation. It even sounds like something he would want. Big words to describe big things. Not just I have my body to science. Anatomical donation. I almost wish I could be in the programs to know what he would be used for. Maybe they will tell us. Maybe he will help resolve something big. Would he ever know? Will we? Will he even make it up there? I try not to think about what exactly will happen. It’s not easy to think about any avenue of death. He could help save lives. He will.

We won’t have a funeral. We couldn’t even if we could. There are rules about it right now. We didn’t want one anyway. Its exhausting. Funerals are a big group of people who come together to send off a person. That’s not a formal definition. Nor does it need one. I leave exhausted from the people who require to see it to believe it, the ones who can’t handle seeing it, the ones who come to chat, the ones who come and just sit, the ones who sing too loud, cry too much, the ones who leave early. It’s a room full of too many different kinds of reasons they are there.

You never have clothes when it happens. Even dry cleaners are prepared. It’s the one thing you can say for same day service. No one ever has simple black shoes. Do we buy them then get rid of them? I don’t even know if I do? I think the last funeral I went to I was barefoot by the end. Maybe people leave shoes? There feet too heavy to hold them up. It’s an added weight to the one we carry.

We wrote his story. It has over 1500 words. The funeral suit man said there was no limit for their website. I bet he is wrong. I bet he just didn’t know someone could write as much as we did. If we had put it in the paper it would have been thousands of dollars. I can’t find anything I want removed and the more I read what I wrote the more I add. After mine he will likely make word rules. I can’t tell enough about him for people to understand who he was. How do you write that kind of story without it being a couple of books?

I leave with one of each grief pamphlets. I don’t need to have them all but didn’t want to mess up the display. I will no doubt read them all. Try to become an expert griever. I am not curious what is available online about how to deal. A search for this will lead to the answers it will also not provide. It would be a search in all the wrong places to deal. I just need a few simple bullet points laid out and a few sentences to define. Then I can make my own rules. Grieve my own way. That’s what is online anyway. Everyone else’s ways. Not yours.

I told myself I wouldn’t actively seek someone to donate life to. And I didn’t, but my mom was reading a story and switched pages and a story appeared of a local woman who needs a liver. Right now people don’t want to go to medical facilities to donate organs. Or even to go to one to not donate organs. We aren’t even supposed to be going to the store unless it’s essential and she is asking for someone to decide that her desire to live a longer life is essential. Would this be? It is. We are told we don’t get to go out and decide who we unknowingly infect with a disease we unknowingly may have. So can they say you can’t go out to save a life?

Someone once decided to save my dads life while also living her own. The choice is yours.