In honor of the two year anniversary of my dad's death.
Dad died suddenly of a heart attack on October 28, 2009 at the age of 62. He had been battling diabetes for about a decade and, try as we might, we couldn’t get him to follow his doctor’s orders. Dad refused to give up his Cheetos, wasn’t interested in the treadmill, and would rather kill himself than go through the repeated surgeries and poor quality of life his own father dealt with for over 20 years.
I inherited Dad’s stubbornness, his short temper and his inability to keep his opinions to himself. He was a chauvinist and I was a feminist. Mom knew she was lighting a fuse every time he and I were in the same room. She never quite knew what she was going to get and, often, she would have had less tension in the house if she had brought home a rattle snake and set it loose in the kitchen.
When the hospital asked Mom if she wanted to donate Dad's organs, she looked at me like a deer about to be plowed over by an 18-wheeler. I probably had a similar look on my face. How should we know what Dad would prefer? He didn't really like many people. In fact, he could be quite critical of most people. In retrospect, I think Dad's impatience with others was most likely a defense mechanism, possibly caused by his time spent in Vietnam. But we didn't have the perspective of time when we were expected to make this decision. We didn’t realize his time spent in Vietnam may even have caused his death, 40 years later. During the funeral preparations, we learned Agent Orange has been blamed for adult onset diabetes, heart conditions and depression. This could explain much of his demeanor which even he may not have realized. I remembered so much anger that I couldn’t even remember the happier days of Dad’s life and I had an overwhelming feeling that he had drawn the short stick.
Wanting to do something positive and allow Dad to live on, we decided to do proceed with the organ donations.
"I hope he understands why I’m doing this," Mom said with tears in her eyes.
"I'm sure he does, Mom."
She worried about it for a long time. I have to admit, I wasn't convinced Dad would have been on board if he had been asked about donating his organs while he was still alive. In fact, just to be argumentative, he would have said absolutely not. Would he have meant it? He did donate blood on a regular basis, but he also ignored The Blood Center’s calls if he thought they were calling too often. Sometimes it was difficult to tell when Dad really felt strongly about something and when he was simply being grumpy. Of all the decisions we made, the organ donation was the one that weighed on all our minds for the first year after Dad's death.
For me, the weight lifted today. Seventy-seven people across the country and parts of Canada have benefited from Dad's bone and soft tissue donation. I thought maybe a couple of people in Wisconsin would receive donations, but I had no idea the impact our loss would have on so many other people. A 13-year-old in New York received a donation for an orthopedic operation. A 45-year-old in Wisconsin received a donation for an ACL reconstruction. A 67-year-old in Oklahoma received a donation for a dental procedure. The list goes on and on. People have had neck fusions, lumbar fusions, repaired ankles and clavicle bones, spinal fusions, and hip replacements, all with a little help from Dad. The age range of the patients is all the way from 11 to 81. Amazing.
Sadly, we often let the people in our lives slip away without ever really getting to know them. You think you know your parents inside and out, but I only saw what was on the outside; the manifestations of Dad’s illness, the seriousness of which he kept concealed even from his wife. I was amazed how little I knew about my dad and his life until it was too late to truly understand. With the additional insight I’ve now gained about the reality of Agent Orange and with some time to see the whole of Dad’s life, good and bad, I’ve come away with a new understanding of this man I thought I knew. I am no longer worried about what Dad would think about the organ donation. He might pretend otherwise, but I am pretty sure he would secretly be pleased.
