The Diocesan Dialogue
Current Issue
January 2008

Special Kind of Giving: Organ, Eye and Tissue Donation

By Susan Wiltsey Smith

Most anyone will help someone else. The issue is knowing when and how; we are afraid to ask, and potential recipients hesitate to let us know. In that space of almost touching, think of the love and potential lost. There is one kind of giving, however, that is always available and always needed: organ, eye and tissue donation.

When I mention organ donation to people, most grin and say something like, "there isn't anything left of my organs," "mine are used up," or "Who would want my body parts?" We have to pass through and over humor and squeamishness in order to arrive at a central truth: we all have what someone else may desperately need.

My husband, Michael Smith, had a heart transplant on April 14, 1998 at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City; he was 53 years old and through the competence of his doctor and the severity of his case, he was moved up to number one in the nation for a heart.

He waited 4 ½ months in LDS hospital for his heart. I did not know him then, or go through this dark and light journey with him, but he is as alive and here now as anyone is. It is an amazing realization that thanks to the gift of someone else, I got to meet Mike at all.

Before there was any understanding by either Mike or myself that a deeper and longer relationship was in store, I was asked by Alex McDonald, Director of Public Relations for Intermountain Donor Services to be a volunteer and to come to a new volunteers' meeting in St. George. I couldn't go because of being in Salt Lake City for Episcopal Diocesan business and I asked my friend, Mike Smith, if he could go and represent Grace Episcopal Church. He agreed and went.

By the time of the next Intermountain Donor Services dinner meeting, I had been asked to lead two Episcopal congregations, one in Cedar City and one in Ivins, and Mike and I were engaged. We went together to the dinner at Rococo's, up on the hill by the airport.

As I became acquainted with the donors and recipients from Washington County whom Mike had met three months previously, I was dumbstruck. Hearing their stories, put me in the state I'd call Kairos Time—where all time is now and we have each transcended our smaller selves. Chronos time had vanished completely.

I was eating dinner with giants and thoroughly human people at the same time. On my left was the Osmond family, beaming with friendliness and joy, Lisa, Vic and their daughter, Ashlee, a student at Dixie State College. The Osmond's son, Adam, a year older than Ashlee, died from a drug overdose at age 17.

Across the table from me were Steve and Dora Lee Bird, also St. George residents. Steve was alive only because he was the recipient of Adam Osmond's liver. The Osmond's and the Bird's are close friends, now one family and you could tell.

I am not sure I can describe the feeling I had then, and now as I think of these people. My fiancé, Michael, was on my other side, and we were all doing an ordinary thing, eating dinner, in circumstances that magnified and surpassed any other dinner I have ever had.

The moment was as sharp, clear, and beautiful as a Tibetan singing bell.

These people were alive in different, deeper ways than they had ever been, and being with them, so was I. Losing a child is the worst of all pains and losses. But the Osmond's child was still alive, and because of the incredible loss and gift Adam's family experienced, by not only being able to save at least one person's life (Adam's kidneys went out of state), but knowing and seeing that person, life for all of us took on a significance beyond all but the most exquisite art or music.

All religions teach that we are one; here was a prime example of how deeply we are connected to one another, and how our deepest loss, can be someone else's gain of life. Sitting at that dinner table, "giving" became alive in itself. We know we cannot stop human tragedy and loss, but there is a beautiful golden road—giving what is most valuable to us to someone else—and our pain is transformed to healing and opens the floodgates of God.

What most of us do not know is that one organ donor can save the lives of nine people. Organs can be recovered from people well into their 80s. Corneas for transplant can be recovered up to age of 70 and two people could regain their sight from one cornea donor. If you were an organ, eye, and tissue donor, you could restore sight to two people and affect the lives of over 50 people through your gift.

We know we live in abundance, not scarcity, and if that gift of life which was given to us can be used some day to extend someone else's life, what an acknowledgement of our unity and love.

If you have not joined the Utah Donor Registry, sign up by saying "yes" on your driver's license or by going on line to www.yesutah.org or call 1-866-937-8824.

The Rev Susan Wiltsey Smith is Vicar, St. Jude's Episcopal Church. Cedar City; and Priest-in-Charge at Spirit of the Desert. swiltsey@kayenta.net

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