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Open Letter to an Organ Donor (Samuel Flegel 8/31/78-1/11/2000)


My dearest Samuel,

This marks the first anniversary letter I’ve written to you with an ounce of hesitance. Not for any bad news, though there was some. 

I pause because my mother raised me to fear the jinx. But I believe in you more than any superstition, so to hell with it. 

You see, we met 24! years ago today. Which puts us within a calendar year of a QUARTER-CENTURY together. And, parenthetically, me within spitting distance (five months) of 60 effing years old.

Neither milestone seemed feasible when we began our odyssey in 2000. There were only two hospitals in the nation that even attempted pancreatic transplants, and docs said that the organ lifespan averaged seven years, given successful surgery. Throw in the required kidney transplant, and all forecasts or expectations should go out the window, docs said. 

So out they went. It wasn’t hard; when I caught diabetes at 13, the notion of seeing 60 seemed as far-fetched as me dunking. That’s old age. Granny’s sixty, right, from the black and white pictures?

But then we crossed paths, and suddenly I’m touching rim. 

I know it’s you, lifting me during a layup so lil’ slugger can soar. But air is air. Even when it’s getting thin.

And it’s been thin this year. We lost sis, whose last stop came three nights before Halloween. You would have loved her fire; not so much her rain.

And you know about the back/rib break. Sorry for rattling the windows. This house is creaky as get out. 

But here we are, on the 26th of 25 moonlit miles. The home stretch.

I am being melodramatic. Should I reject tomorrow, today would be no less remarkable, if only for all the ground we have broken so far.

Twenty-four years of not being diabetic. Twenty-four years of standing our ground. Twenty-four years of thinking about you Every. Single. Day.

And I ain’t one for final stops. Gimme late charges all day, anyday. 

So let’s sprint the finish, Sam. And leave the gym door open. We’ll run the mystic marathon as long as these heels still kick dust. 

Just Sign on The Donor Line…


Open Letter to an Organ Donor: Samuel Flegel (8/31/78-1/11/2000) 

Dear Sam,

It’s odd, how compelled I feel to write you on this day. It’s the day we met, yes. But it meant such starkly different things to each of us and the people who loved us. Love us.

Twenty-three years on the blade. Can you believe it?

Of course you can. You allowed it to be. Or whispered ‘And so it goes.’

For the longest time, I thought of you as mine. Literally, like something I owned, as a parent might think of a child, or an animal lover their pet. After all, you were 14 years my junior at the transplant. Just a kid on a motorcycle, coming home from a party.

Sam

But they must have transplanted something beyond organs that day. Because lately, you have been more like bigger brother than younger charge. A big brother who keeps hammering me with a singular message:

‘Embrace the beautiful sorrows.’

It took a couple decades, but I think I’m beginning to catch on. To spot — and accept — the profound moments when bitter must follow sweet, if only for their passing, just as sweet must trail bitter, if only for their presence.

I think we had one of those moments the day we met. I think we have one with every blood test that goes well, every eye exam that goes poorly, every number that inhabits limbo. Or, as you would have it, south of great, north of hopeless.

It’s been a while since I felt hopeless, and that has to be your doing, your consciousness at work, right? It’s as if a note came with your kidney and pancreas: ‘It’s not enough to live this life. Insist on it.’

So I try to barge. I try to smile, genuinely, at least once a day. I try to laugh, genuinely, at least once a day. The dogs make that possible, though I still often fail.

I try to cry, genuinely, at least once a day. You make that possible, though I often fail there, too, because if I think too hard about it, I sometimes cry a lot.

But you welcome all hypocriticals, especially the ones about seizing sunlight and sniffing roses when some days you’re just trying to get tomorrow in the bag.

Since Covid, I find myself dropping into virtual college lectures on the sciences, from biology to astronomy to physics to math, a class I never took beyond high school. Now I’m convinced math is a faith. That’s you too, right?

Lately, I’ve been consumed by the notion of the multiverse. I love contemplating the quantum possibilities of our seismic days.

What if you hadn’t had the motorcycle crash? What if I hadn’t had diabetes?

Would you read my stories? Would I ride your trains? Would we be friends, fathers, famous? It’s all possible, the physicists say. And I’m all-in on science.

So I believe. I believe that you were at the transom of the multiverse on that day, making sure the rearviews were folded back and the windshield was spotless. I believe you found me. I believe that, like Han Solo ledged over the carbonite bath, you grinned, winked, and said ‘Seeing more yesterdays than tomorrows ain’t exactly a calamity, kid.’

And you were gone. And we were off. And it still makes me cry, a lot sometimes.

What a beautiful sorrow.

Open Letter to an Organ Donor: Samuel Flegel (8/31/78-1/11/2000)

On the Morrow

I know not where the spirit flees

When life has made the choice

To bring the body to its knees

And let the soul rejoice

But somewhere in the cosmos

Where truth and faith do meet

At that intersection

You can table me a seat

So when sun and sky have parted Way

And starlight heaves a sigh

Keep on eye the morrow day

Forever on the nigh


Brother mine,

Can it really be 22 years? Seriously, I’m asking.

See, you’ve messed with my sense of time. And by ‘messed with,’ I mean shook my world and got shit straight.

Before I knew you, when I was diabetic, time was a zero-sum game. It moved from one place, me, and into another place, far from me. It made for a lousy hourglass: leaky, relentless, ever more granular.

But since our paths crossed, 22 years ago today, you have flipped the hourglass — or at least the way it seems to measure. Now I don’t mark time counting down, but counting up.

When did that change? When did I forget all life is youth? As a child, I knew the proper order. I was once ‘six AND A HALF.’ ‘NEARLY 16,’ ‘ ALMOST 18’, ‘FINALLY 21.’

Somewhere, I began counting down. Or backward. Or outward. Whatever the direction, time seemed to move without me in the current, yet still in its undertow.

And then our paths merged in Minnesota, where you bent time like Superman at a railroad trestle.

Now I count up again. Now I don’t see a zero-sum game, but a long distance record to be kept, defended, improved and journaled. Twenty-two years and counting, and I never expected to be noting calendars.

I don’t know where your heart, or lungs, or other kidney went on January 11, 2000. Hopefully, those organs play a hymnal to you everyday, especially this one.

Because our journey, at least, has offered my life more than an extension of time. It has given me a sense of purpose: To see how long a sickly scribbler can peck away away despite Mother Nature’s disdain. Each day, science as tailwind, we plant that flag a step further, a hand higher.

And we may be nearing a notable summit. Or at least an impressive basecamp: The people at Fairview University say they don’t know of a kidney-pancreas transplant that’s lasted this long.

So why stop here? Let’s hold our anniversary as mile-marker, with a nod to Mother Nature and a question of Father Time:

Where to next?

Now, back to that question: Can it really be 22 years? Because it feels like yesterday.

Or tomorrow.