The Truth - Part Two

Since I'm already sad tonight, I thought I'd go ahead and give you part two of the death talk.

After the hospital people have some names and start calling people for you, then they start wanting to know two other things.

1. What funeral home do you want to use?

and

2. Do you want to donate your loved one's organs and/or tissues?

Now, unless you are one of those people who is exceptionally organized, you have probably never thought about the answer to question number 1. They ask you this right away when you're in shock too. They ask it over and over and over until you finally just blurt out an answer. I had no idea what funeral home to use. I just wanted them to stop talking about funeral homes. I was still in the J-can't-be-dead stage. Honestly, I thought I might wake up at any moment and not need a funeral home.

So, my advice is to decide on what funeral home you might want right now. Put it on your people to call list. Then you can just hand the list to someone, and let them deal with it while you're still waiting to wake up from the nightmare.

Question number 2 gets trickier. It comes with a very long and detailed explanation of what parts can be donated and how soon it needs to happen. Let me say right up front that I am all for being a donor. I think it's an amazing thing that you can do to help someone else. The one thing they don't tell you is that you have to die in the hospital preferrably hooked to a ventilator in order for the organs to be useful. J died at the scene. By the time he arrived at the hospital, it was too late for any of his organs to be useful. At least that's what they told me. It may be incorrect, but that's what the nurse said. They did say that I could have some tissues donated and his eyes.

The problem is that they explain all this to you while you are trying to think of who to call, which funeral home to use, and why isn't somebody in there making J better because he can't be dead. I wasn't in any condition to make a deicion like that. My first thought was that I can't give away his body parts. He's still using them. He needs them. How will he stop being dead if you take them out? At that moment, it was all about stopping him from being dead.

Then they tell you if you say no that no one else can ever contact you again about donating. Wait. Are you telling me that I only get one chance on this? I have to decide right now? I have no time to think about it? It's a serious, serious decision. It shouldn't be made on the spot when you are in shock and hysterical.

So my advice is to think about it right now. Talk to your doctor about it. Find out about the process. If you feel like you want to do it, sign on the back of your driver's license. Then your spouse or loved one can just hand the license over to the hospital. And if it's your loved one who dies, you won't have to make a decision with half a mind and hope that you did the right thing.

There will be more episodes of The Truth about Death as I feel up to writing about them. I hope it might help someone else one day.