“Thanks,” I told her. “If we’re exchanging junk, let me get something out of my garbage for you.”
She didn’t understand my attempt at humor. “Open,” she said, picking up the box and handing it to me. Paint and rust fell from it as I gripped the box in my hands. I was reluctant to open it, fearing it might still contain the remains of the world’s first fruitcake. “Open,” she said again, this time smacking me on the side of my head and pushing the box into my chest. I opened the box and was amazed. The inside was finished in gold leaf, polished and shined like a mirror.
In the box was a single, white, origami paper swan. “Every month we are together I will make you a white swan to put in our box,” she said. “After one year, we will string the swans together to hang on the praying tree in front of Nishiohama Temple. This will be our way of thanking God for our time together. I will make you a blue swan to put in the box to show our one year of love together. And if we ever have an argument or fight, I will make us a red swan, so when we see it in our box we will remember what we did wrong and learn from it as a couple.” We placed two strings of white swans on the tree at the temple while we were together. And in time, a few red ones appeared in our box as well.
It was during the middle of our third year together that Hitomi began to get sick. She had told me she had health problems in the past, but they were nothing for me to worry about. That was the only lie Hitomi ever told me. I found out through her best friend that she had leukemia and was in the final stages of that sickening disease. Her parents admitted her to the hospital, and after several weeks of pleading, they finally let me see her. I sat next to her bed and softly kissed her lips. When she saw me she smiled.
“Hello, honey,” she whispered. Then she pointed to the nightstand next to her bed. “Please open for me.” I opened the nightstand and saw within it a single, white paper swan. “I want to take to your house but too sick. I’m sorry. Now you please put in our box, okay?”
I nodded and kissed her forehead—tears flowing down my cheeks. I didn’t notice how frail she had become. Or that her skin, once tanned and glowing, was now pale and gray. I also didn’t notice that the long, silky hair she meticulously combed every day was gone, due to heavy doses of chemotherapy. I didn’t see any of that. To me she was as beautiful as the first day we met, maybe even more so. It was then that I realized I wasn’t looking at her—I was looking inside her. I saw the beauty in her that could never be changed. I saw what was important. I now understood the meaning of that tin box she gave me. It was her way of preparing me for what she knew would inevitably become of her—her way of teaching me that pure beauty is on the inside. And that no matter how broken or old the outside may appear, what’s important— what’s real—is that which is held inside.
Hitomi died two days later. Her family didn’t allow me at her funeral. I was a foreigner. That was fine. I knew she was with me, and she always would be—every time I opened that old tin box.
I once read, “No one knows what any object means except he or she who owns it.” When I look at that tin box I think how true that is. Since her death, people have asked me about the relationship I had with Hitomi. My answer is as perplexing to them as it is simple to me: “Seven white, four red and two blue.”
Robert P. Curry
Joseph’s Living Legacy
In helping others, we shall help ourselves, for whatever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us.
Flora Edwards
With loving tenderness I unpacked my son Joseph’s Little League trophy, his stack of X-Man comics and the framed pictures of elephants that had decorated his bedroom walls back in our old apartment. Just two weeks before, Joseph had so looked forward to moving into his own room in the new house. Now, making his bed, I couldn’t hold back the tears. My little boy will never sleep here, I grieved. I’ll never glimpse his smile again or feel his loving hug.
Wondering how I could possibly manage to go on, I began unpacking the dozens of plush animals Joseph loved to collect—bears and monkeys, chipmunks and giraffes.
Sitting on his bed, I hugged the Chris Columbus bear he used to nuzzle when he was little and I read Love You Forever or another of his favorite stories. Joseph loved books, and to him they were especially precious because he had a learning disability that made it all but impossible for him to read them himself.
But Joseph was a determined little boy who refused to let his disability stop him from learning. He listened to his schoolbooks and tests on tape, and every night we sat together at the kitchen table so I could read his math problems to him and help him with his spelling. Joseph worked so hard; he always made honor roll at school. He also earned a green belt in karate and was pitcher for his Little League baseball team.
In many ways Joseph was just a regular little boy who loved playing video games with his brother, David, or going to the movies with his sister, Shalom. But Joseph also knew what it was like to feel different and need a helping hand.
I can’t remember how many times I spotted Joseph carrying groceries for one of our elderly neighbors or refusing money after shoveling their cars out from the snow. He loved putting on puppet shows for the little girl down the street with Down’s syndrome, and once, when doctors thought his friend Micah might need a kidney transplant, my son came to me and said, “I sure wish I could give him one of mine.”
Joseph, my little mensch, always made me proud, even on the last day of his life.
I was folding clothes in the den that Saturday afternoon when out of nowhere my husband, Lou, shouted for me to call 911. He and Joseph had been discussing a movie they planned to see when suddenly Joseph collapsed onto his bed complaining of a terrific headache. His breathing grew ragged, and then it stopped. Lou, who is a physician, performed artificial respiration until the paramedics arrived. Then he called ahead to the ER while I rode in the ambulance with Joseph and prayed he wouldn’t die.
Joseph, always the picture of health, had suffered a massive brain aneurysm. “Is he going to die?” I asked my husband. Holding me tightly he answered, “Yes.”
It seemed impossible. Only an hour ago my son was home watching TV—and now he was on life support with no hope of ever regaining consciousness. I wanted to cry out in shock and grief.
But there wasn’t time. There was something important I had to do—and I had to do it right away.
“We have to donate his organs,” I told Lou, recalling the time Joseph wanted to give a kidney to Micah. “It’s what he would have wanted us to do.”
A transplant coordinator made all the arrangements, and a few hours later our family gathered at Joseph’s bedside to offer a prayer and say our last good-byes.
Then we went home, and throughout that night while surgeons recovered my son’s organs I lay curled on his bed, clutching his favorite blanket and telling him how much I would always love him.
I don’t know how I survived those next two weeks—the funeral and moving into the house we’d already contracted to buy. I cried every time I went near Joseph’s new bedroom—the one he would have loved, if only he’d lived. There was a gaping hole in my heart.
Then one day when I felt I could bear my grief no longer, a letter came from the transplant coordinator. “I am writing to share the outcome of your generosity,” I read with tears spilling down my cheeks.
Two Kentucky women, one of them the mother of a boy Joseph’s age, were now off dialysis because they had each received one of my son’s kidneys. Meanwhile, in Missouri, cells from Joseph’s liver were helping to keep a critically ill transplant candidate alive while doctors waited for a matching donor organ to become available. In California two young children would soon be able to run and play with the healthy new heart valves my son had bequeathed them. And two teenagers, one from Kentucky and the other from New York, had regained their eyesight thanks to Joseph’s corneas.
Seven people’s lives had been changed dramatically because of my son. I carried the letter with me for days
, reading and rereading it and marveling especially at the teens who’d received Joseph’s corneas. Joseph’s learning disability had prevented him from reading. But because of his very special gift there were now two more children in the world who could. Somehow, this helped me understand that my son had not lost his life in vain.
I wanted each and every one of Joseph’s recipients to know who he was. So one night I wrote them each a letter and told them all about the little boy who had given them the ultimate gift. I asked the transplant agency to forward the letters to all seven recipients. With each I sent along one of his beloved stuffed animals and a copy of a school essay that he’d once written describing how to take care of them.
Knowing the good my son had brought into the world made it easier to walk past his room without bursting into tears. It helped the rest of the family, too, and eventually we became able to share happy memories of Joseph around the dinner table and at other family gatherings.
Lou and I also honored Joseph’s memory by speaking to community groups and high-school students about the importance of organ donation. After a TV interview, the mother who had received one of Joseph’s kidneys contacted us.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she sobbed the day we first met.
“Seeing a part of my son living on is thanks enough for me,” I said. Because of her new kidney, the woman had been able to attend her own son’s eighth-grade graduation. Joseph never reached the eighth grade, but instead of begrudging the woman her happiness, I kvelled in it— because it was my son who had made this miracle possible.
My son is gone, but in a very real way he still lives on, doing what he always did best—offering a helping hand to others in need. Some say Joseph’s life was brief. I say it was full.
I once heard that if you save a life, you save the world. Well, my son saved five lives and gave the gift of sight to two others. What mother could possibly ask any more of her child? What mother could possibly be any prouder?
Kathie Kroot
As told to Heather Black
To Remember Me
The day will come when my body will lie upon a white sheet neatly tucked under four corners of a mattress located in a hospital busily occupied with the living and the dying. At a certain moment a doctor will determine that my brain has ceased to function and that, for all intents and purposes, my life has stopped.
When that happens, do not attempt to instill artificial life into my body by the use of a machine. And don’t call this my deathbed. Let it be called the Bed of Life, and let my body be taken from it to help others lead fuller lives.
Give my sight to the man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby’s face or love in the eyes of a woman. Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain. Give my blood to the teenager who was pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play. Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week. Take my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve in my body and find a way to make a crippled child walk.
Explore every corner of my brain. Take my cells, if necessary, and let them grow so that someday, a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her window.
Burn what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow.
If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses and all prejudice against my fellow man.
Give my sins to the devil. Give my soul to God.
If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you. If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.
Robert N. Test
The Pencil Box
I was deep in thought at my office preparing a lecture to be given that evening at a college across town when the phone rang. A woman I had never met said she was the mother of a seven-year-old boy and that she was dying. She said her therapist had advised her that discussing her pending death with her little boy would be too traumatic for him, but somehow that didn’t feel right to her.
Knowing that I worked with grieving children, she asked my advice. I told her that our heart is often smarter than our brain, and that I thought she knew what would be best for her son. I also invited her to attend the lecture that night since I was speaking about how children cope with death. She said she would be there.
I wondered later if I would recognize her at the lecture, but my question was answered when I saw a frail woman being half-carried into the room by two adults. I talked about the fact that children usually sense the truth long before they are told, and they often wait until they feel adults are ready to talk about it before sharing their concerns and questions. I said that children usually can handle truth better than denial, even though the denial is intended to protect them from pain. I said that respecting children meant including them in the family sadness, not shutting them out.
At the break, she hobbled to me and said through her tears, “I knew it in my heart. I just knew I should tell him.” She said that she would that night.
The next morning I received another phone call from her. I managed to hear the story through her choked voice. She said she awakened him when they got home the night before and quietly said, “Derek, I have something to tell you.”
He quickly interrupted her, saying, “Oh, Mommy, is it now that you are going to tell me that you are dying?”
She held him close, and they both sobbed while she said, “Yes.”
After a few minutes the little boy wanted down. He said he had something for her that he had been saving. In the back of one of his drawers was a dirty pencil box. Inside the box was a letter written in simple scrawl. It said, “Good-bye, Mom. I will always love you.”
How long he had been waiting to hear the truth, I don’t know. I do know that two days later Mom died. In her casket was placed a dirty pencil box and a letter.
Doris Sanford
2
THE POWER
OF SUPPORT
Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.
Albert Camus
When No Words Seem Appropriate
Many things, beyond a doubt, remain to be said which others will say with greater force and brilliance. But we need have no hope that one will utter on this Earth the word that shall put an end to our uncertainties. It is very probably, on the contrary, that no one in this world, nor perhaps in the next, will discover the great secret of the universe. Behold us then before the mystery of the cosmic consciousness.
Maurice Maeterlinck
I won’t say “I know how you feel”—because I don’t. I’ve lost parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends, but I’ve never lost a child. So how can I say I know how you feel?
I won’t say “You’ll get over it”—because you won’t. Life will have to go on. The washing, cooking, cleaning, the common routine. These chores will take your mind off your loved one, but the hurt will still be there.
I won’t say “Your other children will be a comfort to you”—because they may not be. Many mothers I’ve talked to say that after they have lost a child, they easily lose their temper with their remaining children. Some even feel resentful that they’re alive and healthy when the other child is not.
I won’t say “Never mind, you’re young enough to have another baby”—because that won’t help. A new baby will fill your hours, keep you busy and give you sleepless nights. But it will not replace the one you’ve lost.
You may hear all these platitudes from your friends and relatives. They think they are helping. They don’t know what else to say. Many will avoid you because they can’t face you. Others will talk about the weather, the holidays and the school concert but never about how you’re coping.
So what will I say?
I will say “I’m here. I care. Anytime. Anywhere.” I will talk about your loved one. We’ll laugh about the good
memories. I won’t mind how long you grieve. I won’t tell you to pull yourself together.
No, I don’t know how you feel—but with sharing, perhaps I will learn a little of what you are going through. And perhaps you’ll feel comfortable with me and find your burden has eased. Try me.
Written by a Pediatric Nurse to Ann Landers
What You Can Do for a Grieving Friend
The most precious moments in friendship were not when I laughed with a friend, though those times are so good, but when I cried with a friend and she reached out and listened and understood.
Fran Morgan
The husband of my best friend called me from the hospital. As soon as I heard his voice, I knew the worst: Their lovely nineteen-year-old, Hilary, was going to die. “It’s spread,” he said, sounding rough and angry. “They’re going to try some experimental drug, but they don’t hold out much hope. Molly’s with her now.”
“Oh, David . . . David . . .” I whispered, searching for the words. What does one say at such a moment? What phrases could possibly be a match for the enormity of the plain and awful facts?
None. A man whose son was killed by a drunk driver had taught me that. He said, “I hated people saying, ‘I know how you feel’ or ‘I share your pain.’ How could they know the misery as sharp as a thousand splinters of glass inside me? How could they be sharing that?”
“What could they say?” I asked.
He thought a minute before answering. “All I wanted them to say was, ‘I’m sorry.’ It was the only thing that meant anything to me, just a simple ‘I’m sorry.’”
Remembering his words, I said, “David, I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.”
And later that night, when I met Molly at their front door and we clung to each other, I said, “I’m so dreadfully sorry.” After a while I told her, “I’ve made fresh coffee. It’s on the stove. I’ll be back about nine in the morning.”