Violet
There’s something I need to do – something I’ve been putting off for a long while now because it just seems too… hard.
I need to make contact with the family of my donor.
It’s been four years now since they lost their loved one and I still know nothing about the person who in death, saved my life.
I don’t know if it was a man or a woman, or if they were young or old.
I don’t know how they died or if their organs were used to save anybody else.
I don’t know what they did for a job or how many people they left behind.
I don’t know a single thing about them, so I know it’s time to reach out now.
The only option I have is a letter. I can give a letter to the hospital’s transplant co-ordinator, who will pass it onto the family of my donor. It’s up to them if they want to reply, or even read it at all, and even if I never hear back, at least I’ll know I tried.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to write – I don’t know the right way to thank someone for the unbelievable gift I’ve been given.
I could ask Rylan for help, but he already does so much for me, and this feels like something I need to do on my own.
I started this journey a long time ago, and I need to finish this final chapter. Who knows what might happen after that – maybe sometime soon I’ll be ready to close the book entirely.
I think about the selfless gesture that organ donation is.
I think about the people my donor left behind.
I think about the heart beating in my chest and how I owe my life to someone else.
Each thump of the borrowed organ is so important, so significant that suddenly I know exactly what I need to say.
I reach for a sheet of paper and a pen and write from deep inside my soul.
To the owner of my heart,
You don’t know me, and I know you can’t read this, but I still need to write it.
My name is Violet Miller, and four years ago, you saved my life.
If you hadn’t have ticked that little box labelled ‘donor’, it’s entirely possible I wouldn’t be here right now, so for that I thank you – you chose to be selfless where you could have been selfish instead.
There’s no possible way I could ever repay you, so instead I’ll spend the rest of my life living, really living each moment as it was intended to be lived. I can’t give you much, but I can do that – for both of us.
There’s so many things I wish I could say to you, and it hurts me to know that I’ll never get the chance.
I want you to know that I’m so, so sorry. I can’t even begin to explain the guilt I carry with me every day, knowing that your life was given in exchange for mine.
Why am I here, and you’re not?
I know that’s a question I’ll probably never get an answer to.
There’s a lot of things in this world that make sense to me, but why I was spared when others were taken is something I’m not sure I’ll ever understand.
I hope that whoever you left behind is managing as best they can. I may not have met you, but I don’t need to have known you to understand the hole you left in the lives of those closest to you.
I’ve thought a lot lately about fate, and what happens when we die… I’m still not sure exactly what I believe, but I do think that there’s some place good for those who deserve it, and I know that wherever that is, you’re there.
I have so many questions about you, but I know it’s not my place to ask. I don’t expect your family or friends to give me those answers, they’ve given me enough already. I just hope they can find some peace knowing that I’m alive because of you.
Thank you for my life, I promise to live it.
Violet – The keeper of your heart.