I remember sitting in my driveway alone watching the cars go by on a warm and clear night.  It was as warm and balmy a night as could be in Georgia.  101 Arrowhead Drive, where the main road out of Fort Benning met my street. I know I must have looked so hollow and pathetic with a tear streaked face and swollen eyes.  I had just returned home from my son’s funeral.  Everyone was gone. I was alone with my grief.  I looked up at the starry sky and felt a refreshing breeze blow through my sweat matted hair, when I heard the crunch of the hearty Georgian grass behind me, the sound of something heavy walking through. I turned around and through the lights of the cars going by I spotted three young deer. Right there behind me, standing cautiously, their eyes wide with fear as they realized my presence.  I don’t know why I cried, but I instantly began to sob.  I wondered if it was a sign. Were these sweet and benevolent creatures drawn to the weighty sorrow the wind blew their way? Could they smell the salt of my tears and sweat.  They were young and alone. Maybe their mamas were gone and they could relate to the longing and pain in my soul?  I felt instantly connected to them. In a haste, I clumsily moved towards them and they scattered faster than I could stand.  The encounter was my inspiration for using the images of deer on Blade’s tombstone.  Years later when I visited his grave, three deer would visit me again, walking past me in a line at the cemetery.

The day Blade was declared brain dead, my husband and I were approached by an organization called Life Link, an organ harvesting non profit organization.  We made the painful and hopeful decision to donate Blade’s heart, liver, and small intestines to two baby girls that desperately needed them.  We were so fresh in our journey through grief that we chose an anonymous donation, meaning that the names of the families and patients would not be exchanged. There was an option to communicate to the receiving families, but it would be quite a process and they had the choice to refuse any communication.  We spent 13 anniversaries of his death always wondering how the little girls were doing.  Comforted by thought of his heart beating on in that little girl’s chest. His liver cleansing the blood of that other girl and his intestines absorbing and passing along her nutrients. It was a morbid sort of hope. Only understood by those who have walked this path. Then a few weeks ago, on the 13th anniversary of Blade’s passing, I gathered my courage and found the number to the Life Link of Atlanta. I dialed the phone with adrenaline running through my veins, my heart racing, my hands unsteady, my soul throbbing with excitement. I left all my information with the woman on the phone and she told me that someone would call me back right away. Sure enough, not even an hour later my phone rang and that familiar Atlanta area code lit across the phone. I picked it up shaking and breathing heavily, my heart in my throat.  She started by reconfirming all sorts of information and then came the update.  Both girls had passed away and neither of them lived very long with his organs. I was so very quiet, using every ounce of my might to maintain a calmness in my voice when I did speak.  I thanked the woman, hung up the phone, then let out a wail that seemed to carry the weight of 13 years of false hope and its grief.  I felt his death all over again. His death felt meaningless.  I mourned the girls. I mourned his organs gone forever, back to him. There was none of him here on this earth.  I would never get to hear his heart beat in her chest like I had fantasized.  I have been grieving the revelation since. Pondering the sadness and unfairness of life.  Trying desperately to connect to God. But I feel a great chasm. And I wonder, that day in my driveway, if rather than comfort, it was sign of the reality of what would happen.  The three deer in the cemetery? Blade and the two girls, his companions in heaven. What do they want to tell me? What would they want me to do? Reach out to their families? We would have so much in common with so much binding us together. We tried. We did everything we could to give them a chance.  And somehow I feel another morbid comfort, that Blade has friends in heaven. Two sweet girls whose mamas and daddies are feeling everything I feel every day of my life.