Wanted to share this......

I recently lost my stepmom as many of you knew and when we went through her lockbox to we came across a group of papers and notes. On these notes she wrote her last wishes...music to be played, flowers for her casket, dress to be worn, etc....Debie and I cried because most of what we had already picked out was what she had listed. Irony? No....it just showed us that we did know her as a person and friend aside from the mother figure we grew up with.  She also had a very yellowed clipping that she had cut out of a newspaper when my dad passed away and Debbie asked my sister Lynn to read this at Sue's funeral.  You see, my dad was an organ donor (as well as being on the donor list waiting for a heart transplant at the age of 46) and after he passed I have also become one as well as my children I am proud to say. I sat by both of them in the BMV when this was asked of them and they both answered on their own "yes" to being an organ donor. The generosity they showed in that moment was beyond words.  Organ donation is such a big part of my life and this poem just really reaffirms it.

To Remember Me

By
Robert Noel Test
(1926-1994)

---

The day will come when my body will lie upon a white sheet neatly tucked under four corners of a mattress located in a hospital busily occupied with the living and the dying.

At a certain moment a doctor will determine that my brain has ceased to function and that, for all intents and purposes, my life has stopped.

When that happens, do not attempt to instill artificial life into my body by the use of a machine. And don't call this my deathbed. Let it be called the Bed of Life, and let my body be taken from it to help others lead fuller lives.

Give my sight to a man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby's face or love in the eyes of a woman.

Give my heart to a person whose own heart has pain.

Give my blood to the teen-ager who was pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play.

Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week.

Take my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve in my body and find a way to make a crippled child walk.

Explore every corner of my brain.

Take my cells, if necessary, and let them grow so that, someday, a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her windows.

Burn what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow.

If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses and all my prejudice against my fellow man.

Give my sins to the devil. Give my soul to God. If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you.

If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.

That is absolutely beautiful!
I am also a proud organ donor   :)

 

LeeAnn-that is beautiful.
I have been an organ donor for all the years I have known about it and told everyone I love that it is important to me so they know it is truely my wish.  Hopefully if something happens to me my wishes will be respected.  Your dad's poem will stike a cord in someone and hopefully make a difference.
thank you for sharing  it.
teach

I, too, am an organ donor, along with my Mom and sister.  Can't take them with you, and what an honor to help someone else live!  Great poem, Lee Ann!

That gave me goose bumps!!

That is lovely Lee Ann

Beautiful LeeAnn

wonderful words LeeAnn....    I am a organ donor I don't know what they will be able to use of my organs but I am willing to give whatever they can take and give to someone else. 

I have seen something similar to this before.  I have a sister that has been on the heart transplant list and a cousin on the bone marrow list.  Needless to say I have been a donor for years.  When kidney transplants were first started I did a scrapbook and report on them in science.   I believe I was in the 8Th grade and I said then that i wanted to donate and have always signed my drivers license plus I carry a donor card, too. 

As a medical technologist in a small hospital we use to have to ask families if they wanted to donate organs.  That was a hard job and I have great respect for those that hold that job full time or any time. 

Jacqueline

awww... gives me chills.  That is unbelievable beautiful.  My BFF's Daddy just got a double lung transplant at Mayo in Jacksonville.  It is such an Amazing Gift.