The love of her life…

She sat beside his hospital bed with her hands folded neatly in her lap, her body aching from days and nights of talking to God.

The Dr. quietly walked in; carrying with him the heavy burden of news he was about to tell her.  She looked up as he cleared his throat.  He told her the chances of her husband coming back to them would be very slim.   He continued to explain to her the details of the surgery letting her know the aneurysm had burst and her husband had also suffered a stroke in the middle of the night and was deemed clinically brain dead. 

 She shook her head back and forth to what he was saying to her and didn’t want to hear anymore.  She felt like her tears had dry run from the past few days of crying but wasn’t surprised when they began to fall again.    

 The Dr. started to talk to her about organ donation and explained to her time was of the essence.  No, she thought to herself, this was not making any sense and it was all happening so fast.   How did they ever get to this place, she couldn’t understand any of it.   He was her love and the father to their 4 children and 3 stepchildren.  They still had so much more to do. Dreams to fulfill and life to experience, everything they talked about.  Now she has to live the rest of her life without him? How was she to explain to their children, daddy wasn’t coming home?  

The news struck her like a lightening bolt.  She had been praying day and night for a miracle, “You can’t give up on him, you just can’t!  She desperately wanted a sign from him that it was ok, what if God was giving her the miracle she prayed so hard for, what if she just waited a little while longer to see if he would wake up but the words of the Dr. played in her mind over and over.  If he wasn’t coming back to her she wanted his death to mean something therefore with a broken heart, she finally made the decision to go ahead with the organ donation. 

What she didn’t realize at the time she made the decision to say yes to the organ donation, shortly there after, someone in the same hospital, was receiving the news of the life saving heart they had been waiting for.  They were celebrating a new chance at life while her world was crumbling down around her.  

 Before they took him away, she crawled into his hospital bed beside him to say her last goodbye.  She held his hand and laid her head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat.  She listened to the rhythm trying to memorize it and she faltered a little, “what if he was a miracle, how could she just let him go”.  His heartbeat sounded so strong but she knew it would serve for a life that could go on living.   

With tears streaming down her face, she got up and looked back at him one last time.  He looked so peaceful and she knew donating his organs was the right thing to do and he would want to help others live.  She turned away and said to the waiting transplant teams, “take what you need”, and she walked away. 

Now his heart beats for someone else…

 His name was Kirt Lisowski and now that he rests in peace, his organs live on to help others get another chance at life.  

 Kirts heart, left kidney, right lung and liver stayed in Edmonton Alberta; his right kidney went to Quebec, his left lung went to Ontario and his pancreas to research.