When exactly would The Call come? I thought about it every day. Sometimes while in the shower, I wondered what it would be like if the call came right then. Important calls have a way of happening at the most inconvenient times. This was the most important call of my life, but I had to try to put it out of my mind. A watched pot never boils.
One thing I couldn’t put out of my thoughts was the knowledge that someone had to lose their life before mine could go on. Our lives would intersect at some unknown point in the future – a date neither of us could predict. I hoped that whoever he or she was, they were doing everything they wanted and needed to do. I hoped that person was happy living what they didn’t realize would be the final weeks of their life.
I hoped that person told the important people in their life that they were loved.
It was hard not to feel like a vulture, waiting to get what I needed from someone who died. So I tried instead to think of it as someone giving me something they were finished with. They didn’t know me, and never would. In that way, it was impersonal, random. But this was a body part. It would be taken from inside them and placed inside me. It doesn’t get more up-close and personal than that.
I had to do more than simply accept this as a fact – I had to make my peace with it.