Oh, "Peggy," how I'll miss you

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It seems like just yesterday that I thought donation and transplantation boiled down to whether or not you had "organ donor" on your license. How young and foolish I was! I now can tell you much, much, much more about the process than I ever hoped to know and than you will ever want to hear. I have heard hundreds of stories of untimely, tragic deaths and like maybe three happy stories of transplant recipients. Just today, I photoshopped eight quilt squares, each one dedicated to someone who died this past year. Some squares have the faces of the person who has died scanned on them. One has the name crookedly embroidered across the front by the spouse. Others have stickers and patches glued on them. How do you pick what will go on square to represent a person's entire life? Mine would consist of cat hair, an ink stain, and the words "she petted every dog she ever met" in glitter. I don't mean to make light of the squares. They are incredibly sad and touching and I hope to never, ever see one again.

Here are some sentences and clauses I have written about 245 times in the last few months:

1. "Make your license a license to heal today."
2. "Ordinary people have made the extraordinary power to save lives."
3. "One tissue donor can impact the lives of more than 50 people" (I still think that's an exaggeration, but okay).
4. "...the critical need for organ and tissue donation."
5. "Donate life on-line..."
6. "Who knew that your saphenous vein could come in so handy?"
7. "Join us...Kick off...Celebrate...Lace up your sneakers...!!!!!!"
8. "Help me, help me, help me" (scribbled on notebook paper during dept. meetings).

Liz L. lent me The Devil Wears Prada last night. She told me that the woman who wrote the novel based it on her real life experience with a hellish woman she worked with at Vogue. And she was on the best seller list for months and months. They are now making it into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. My mom always said that living well is the best revenge.

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