The Pearl 2020

left.
My dad was in his 20’s when a freak virus decided to settle in his heart
causing him to need a heart transplant. The stress of the heart transplant led
to him needing a kidney transplant. Who knows what led to the strokes or
the heart attack or the medley of other health problems that continued to
plague him. The most common question I get about my father is, “how did
he die?” During his time in hospice, however, I didn’t really know what was
killing him. I now know that all the medications that were saving his life
eventually took a toll on his liver, and he wasn’t healthy enough to be put on
another transplant list.
The years I did get to spend with my dad, and my entire life, exist
thanks to the organ donors who saved his life on two separate occasions. The
first in 1990 when he received his heart transplant, and the second in 1996
when he received his kidney transplant. Organ donation allowed my father to
meet the love of his life and get married. He became a step-father to my siblings
and was able to have a child of his own.
Since his death I have graduated high school, started college, travelled
to new places, taken on new leadership opportunities, watched my oldest
brother get married, fallen in love, and now I am only a semester away from
graduating college. My dad will never get to know the woman that I am now.
He won’t see me receive my diploma. He will never meet the man I marry.
Yes, this hurts, but I am still eternally grateful for the 17 years we spent together.
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