Got a couple pints to spare...why not...

Today is the blood-drive at work, and this got me to thinking about something.

I recently made the pilgrimage to the drivers license branch to renew.  The guy asked me if I wanted to be an "organ donor." Here in lies my story with that...

All of my "thinking" life, I've been against organ donation.  Not by others, just by me.  I don't know if it has something to do with my fear of needles, or my just overall not wanting to be "all cut up" when I die.  I know they say we have no idea what is being done when we die, but, who really knows?  It's not like someone has survived death to be able to tell us if we can feel our organs being harvested or not!  I have always, VERY MUCHLY, wanted to be buried with all my parts, thankyouverymuch.

And then it slipped.  I said "yes".  Looking at it now, I wonder if my quickness to say "yes" was just because I have this incredible desire deep down inside me to be married again, in a faithful, loving, romantic, Rapunzel throw down your hair, I'm certainly not getting any younger, kind of relationship.  Complete with white picket fences and kittens in the barn and the kids on a tire swing, and well...you get the picture.  Holy shit, I said yes.  As quick and breathlessly as I would a marriage proposal by Adam Levine. Or Toby Keith. Or Vin Diesel. Or...at this point, just about anyone.  SHITSHITSHIT, I said yes.  How am I gonna look this poor DMV guy in his sad brown eyes and explain "sorry dude, that was a big fat mistake?"

And I left.  I finished what I needed to finish, and I left.  Without a word to them about my fake "yes".  And then I forgot about it.  Until my updated ID came in the mail, and I saw that "telltale heart" (not the creepy Poe one)", and I thought, "ya know...I'm kind of stinking proud of that heart!"  How selfless of me to be willing to give a piece of me, that I no longer need, to someone who does.  If my heart can mean a few more years of someone holding their children, or skipping rope with them, or bungee jumping, or camping under the stars....if my kidney (after 6 years of Geobash, I don't think they want my kidneys), or liver, or lungs or eyes, or...anything they need, can give someone even just one more day, how could I not?  Because I know I would want the same offered to one of my children, should they ever need it.  And how can I be so selfish to expect what I am unwilling to offer?  


And so now, 29ish years later, it's finally hit me that organ donation is pretty damn important, and my hope is that someday EVERYONE sees it the way I now do, because we need to give to survive.




Now, if I could only not be afraid of the needle long enough to donate some blood!