My biggest regret

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life and there are plenty of things that have happened where I wish I had a do-over, but one of them stands out above them all.

Twenty-eight years ago, a rash and emotionally-charged decision I made had an impact on the potential survival of other people.

For context, I lost my father to a tragic accident in 1996. He fell off a ladder while working as an FFA adviser at Oregon Clay High School and injured his head.

While at the hospital, my family was eagerly awaiting the results of brain scans to see if he still had any brain activity. Unfortunately, the first result was negative and we waited another day before the second result again came back negative.

I’m not sure how quickly the subject was broached, but I distinctly remember a doctor asking my mom about the possibility of my dad becoming an organ donor right in front of me and my younger sister and brother.

It should come as no surprise, but all three children, me included, immediately burst into tears, crying and wailing and protesting the idea. You see, by allowing them to harvest his organs, that meant that my dad was really gone. And we weren’t ready to let him go.

“No!” we yelled. In that given moment, I just wanted my dad to remain whole. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t being rational. So of course, seeing her distraught children, my mother sided with us.

I don’t blame my mom for that decision one bit. She had every right to listen to us and we were pretty demanding at the time. It was a traumatic moment. We had just found out that my dad was gone and we didn’t want anyone cutting him up. We hadn’t even been given time to truly process what was happening at the moment.

I’m more upset at the doctor who asked that question in front of me instead of broaching the topic privately with my mom. What a horrible burden to place on an 11- year-old child. I didn’t have any true understanding at the time of how important organ donation can be. All that mattered to me at the time was that I selfishly didn’t want anyone else to have any parts of my dad. I wanted them to stay with him.

I didn’t really think about that decision for about 20 years, but then it came flooding back to me after watching an incredibly emotional video where an organ recipient was secretly invited to the wedding of a woman who had lost her 19-year-old son. She was able to meet the man who received her son’s heart, and even wear a stethoscope and hear her son’s heart beat inside him. They had exchanged messages online before, but had never met in person. The surprise had been pulled off by her groom-to-be.

I still get tears in my eyes thinking about it.

That’s something I could have experienced.

You see, due to the nature of my father’s injury, his body was not negatively impacted. He was a healthy 38-year-old man at the time of his accident. He was a bit overweight, but he could regularly run 10K races. His heart, his kidneys, his liver and lungs all were perfectly fine. His organs could have helped extend the lives of enough people to fill a minivan.

Being a newspaper editor, I’ve seen first hand the benefit of organ donation. On the local level, Upper Sandusky High School band director Jason Morris had his son Luke’s life saved by a liver transplant in February 2016 following a diagnosis of biliary atresia. I wrote a feature in The Daily Chief-Union in 2018 when the Morris family was honored by Lifeline of Ohio with a “Donate Life” flagraising ceremony at the high school. The family continues to be tremendous advocates locally for organ donation. I’m happy to see that Luke still is going strong today.

Whatever kind of afterlife you believe in, pretty much all of them don’t punish anyone for having donated their organs at the time of death. That is, unless you’re a Tibetan Buddhist who believes the spirit stays in the body until about a week after death, where organ donation would interfere with reincarnation.

For everyone else, and especially for me personally, I don’t think you take your organs with you when your life is over. Why not make a difference with the lives of others?

If I could go back in time, I’d encourage the decision to donate my dad’s organs. He was a generous man in his life, and he could have continued to give even after he was gone.

Who knows, maybe it could have been me one day hearing my dad’s heart beat in the chest of someone who’s life he had saved. Instead, I deprived myself of that moment.

I can’t go back in time, but I can at least impact the future. If some unfortunate accident were to befall me before my time on this Earth was supposed to naturally end, I’m proud to be an organ donor today.

And hopefully you will too