Thoughts Askew

Last year, in June, my mother was getting the mail (or doing something outside) when she saw a man with a large backpack walking down the road we live on.  He stopped by and chatted a little bit with mom.  His name is Alastair McCandless, and he is walking across the entire United States to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project.  Here is the organization's mission and purpose.

• To raise awareness and enlist the public's aid for the needs of injured service members.
• To help injured service members aid and assist each other.
• To provide unique, direct programs and services to meet the needs of injured service members.

Mom came back inside and got him a bottle of water.  They chatted for a few minutes about dad and his liver transplant that he had back in December of 2010, and his broken hip a few months later.  She then told him about how he had missed several major festivals around the area: The Nelsonville Music Festival (where I had seen rockabilly and country artist Wanda Jackson), the Moonshine Festival (where I had seen Tommy Cash, brother of the late Johnny Cash), and the Washboard Music Festival.  Later that night, Mr. McCandless wrote a blog about his meeting with my mother.  You can read that blog post here.  His entire blog is very interesting and very funny.  


I was thinking about this chance encounter, and what my mother and Mr. McCandless talked about, I was reminded of this week's Gospel lesson and sermon at church.  

John 15: 12-13 [Jesus said,] "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." (NRSV)

Dad has Hepatitis C, which is a disease that kills the liver.  The liver filters out the ammonia from the body, and when the liver is dying (or dead), the ammonia builds up in the brain.  For about six months, dad was not dad.  He was confused as to where he was, and maybe as to who he was. He had taken a leave of absence at work in May of 2010 just after I graduated from high school, and was finally admitted to the hospital in October after a terrible fall.  He was not doing well between October and December.  The last day of the semester at Capital University was the day the Cleveland Clinic called because they had found a new liver for dad.  I was not home two hours when that call came in.  I remember it seemed like it took us a whole day to drive from our humble abode in Southeastern Ohio to the bustling city of Cleveland.  I remember mom, my sister, and I were all silent the whole way up, save for a few words about going to the bathroom.  Also, I remember it was snowing, making our trip take longer than usual.

Dad received his liver early the next morning around 3am.  The surgery lasted until noon, where he lost nearly 25 liters of blood, a VERY large amount seeing that the body only holds about 7 liters.  We went up after the surgery to ICU.  Four years prior when mom, dad, and I took some time away from work and school to go to Cleveland for 3 days to get some tests done, we went around the whole Cleveland Clinic complex.  We walked into ICU to check it out.  I guess we did that so we can expect what to see when the actual surgery happened.  It didn't frighten me like usual.  Only two of us could go see dad, so I stayed behind while my sister and mom went into the room.  When my sister came out, I went in.  Dad had a respirator on, and two skin-colored pads on his cheeks holding it in.  The nurse there was shaving his face with a Gillette safety razor around the various tubes, knobs, buttons, and switches that were implanted in him.  We asked the nurse if he could be woken up, so she woke him up with some sort of medicine through his Peripherally inserted central catheter.  We talked to him a little, but he was still under a lot of drugs so he couldn't communicate very well.

Mom told him that he had lost 25 liters of blood, and his eyes widened and he pointed up to God with his hands still restrained to the bed.  We told him we loved him and that he will be ok, so he patted our hands.  The nurse then put dad back to sleep.

I honestly expected dad to be much worse.

We don't know much about the woman who passed away, but we do know that her organs were donated to save the lives of many, including my dad.  I think this kind of thing is what Jesus was talking about when he said to give one's life to his or her friend, (even if they don't know each other at all).  This woman died (how? I don't think it really matters), and her body helped save the lives of many others.