You can live ‘forever’ through organ donation

Dear Annie: Several years ago, you printed a poem about organ donation. I’m in end-stage renal failure and want people to be aware of the importance of organ donation. Please reprint it.

Not Giving Up

Dear Not: Here it is, with our hopes for your recovery:

To Remember Me by Robert Noel Test (1926-1994)

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 instil 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 a 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 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 fibre 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 windows.

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 my 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.

Dear Annie: I read the letter from Upset in Montreal, whose friend, Rhonda, has become rude and unsympathetic. Rhonda sounds just like my mom. My mom has some form of dementia and has lost all filters.

Your advice to have Upset ask Rhonda when she’d last seen her doctor was spoton. My bet is that Rhonda is beginning to suffer from dementia.

Wyoming

Dear Wyoming: Any change in personality should send alarm signals to seek medical advice. Please email your questions to anniesmailbox@comcast.net, or write to: Annie’s Mailbox, c/o Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd St., Hermosa Beach, CA 90254. Visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at creators.com