When Your Loved One is an Organ Donor, Part 1 of 3: His Heart is Still Beating

Trigger Warning: Sudden death, organ donor and donation, heartbeat

When most people think of death, they think of the heart stopping. In movies you see the heart monitor go flat and you hear the long beep. So it’s confusing when someone is dead, but they still have a heartbeat. It’s more of a mechanical heartbeat, I guess is the best way to understand it, but it is still beating. After the doctor called my husband’s time of death, his heart was still beating. As I said my final goodbye to him, I could still feel it in his chest. I haven’t told my children that yet. I haven’t figured out a way just yet. I will tell them, but it hasn’t felt appropriate just yet.

The night their dad died one of my little ones was crying and yelling and explaining to me that “you get one brain and one heart and when it’s done it’s done.” While that could have been viewed as a moment to educate them on organ donation, it felt wildly inappropriate and I let the opportunity pass. I attempted to explain it to them a couple times since, but could tell it confused them and I stopped and continued our discussion based on their lead.

When I was one parent of two, I led my family with my heart first and my head second. My husband led with his gut first and his head second. When we would have disagreements, it often came down to this difference. And then we’d use our heads to come up with a compromise. Since he has been gone, I’m learning to trust my gut more and still navigating the head, heart, gut balance. But because of this, it didn’t come as a surprise to me that the first place I laid my hand when I saw him in that hospital bed was on his forehead and trailed my fingers down his face. Then it was on his chest to feel his heart. His face was so soft. His body was so warm. And his heart was beating steady.

His eyes and his heart were what I was most concerned with when donating his organs. I know there are other vital parts that save lives, but I always felt through the eyes you could see the heart. I loved laying my head on his chest and hearing his heartbeat. I would tap my fingers on his chest to the rhythm. BoomBoom,BoomBoom,BoomBoom. I loved the way his eyes looked at me. I loved the way his eyes lit up when our children would laugh with him. Because of him. His eyes were also one of the many sights that let me know he wasn’t coming home with us. When I saw their lack of movement and their lack of light during checks, I knew we were continuing on without him.

My memory of what happened at that hospital is fragmented. But thinking back, I believe it was seeing life no longer in his eyes while feeling his beating heart that aided in my frustration of him being connected to machines. Your brain tells your body how to function. When it cannot do that anymore, we hope that science and technology can grab the baton and take over for us. If your body goes into organ failure, you obviously cannot donate your organs. Seems pretty simple, but it’s a step further than what most of us think about when we check that box at the DMV.

“I’m dead, what do I care what they do with my body.” But if you were completely dead, you wouldn’t be able to donate your organs. That’s where the tricky part comes in for everyone else.

“Don’t even keep me alive for a second. If I can’t breathe on my own, I can’t breathe. Done.”

“Well you’re a dad now, so I’ll give it some time.”

“Never bring me back if I can’t function on my own.”

Deal.

My husband had his fatal accident at work. He was surrounded by people. Help was able to arrive as quickly as they could. Had he fallen from a cliff or gotten into a vehicle accident on a country road, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. I’m no doctor, not even close. I can’t give medical advice or tell you technical details of any procedure, but from what I understand once that heart stops it’s a time-clock to make sure any of your other organs survive. So if I were to stop all care, his heart would have stopped. But luckily for many, in this case, he was able to donate his organs. The doctors and nurses continued to monitor him even after his legal time of death. It took much longer than I was promised. I know this to be true because I emailed the organ donation coordinator, who truly irritated me, several times asking him for updates. And I also know this because as I was beginning to plan my husband’s funeral, his sister and mother were still at the hospital.

About a month after I said goodbye to my husband I received a letter in the mail. It was from the coordinator. He sent me a letter letting me know about the four lives my husband saved. And the letter started with the donation of his heart. I cried, instantly. And it made those memories I have somewhat worth having, because now I have the knowledge that his heart went to a mother.

One day our boys will know that their dad’s heart went to a woman who was the same age as him. She’s been battling heart disease and was a single mother to a son. Reading that solidified that it was worth the wait, because there’s no type of person he would have rather had his heart go to. It was a perfect match and his heart “had immediate function.” Along with his heart, his liver went to a 49 year old man with a wife and three children; one of his kidneys went to a 42 year old man with three children; his other kidney went to a 65 year old woman. Because of my husband, four families can still touch their loved one and at least three did not lose a parent.

My husband always had a soft spot for children. He could soothe a crying baby almost instantly. Any time either of our boys felt sick, he would take them in his warm arms and cuddle with them while they would sweat out whatever illness was bothering them. They would both fall asleep; and then I’d grab whichever son it was from his chest to place him into their bed. My husband’s shirt would be drenched in our child’s sweat, our boy’s head soaked in sweat from the heat of their bodies, and I’d have to gently peel them apart. Matt would always wake up from this exchange and already be in the shower by the time I laid our little one down, like he didn’t just accomplish an angel’s work. Our kids weren’t given much time with him at all, but they were so blessed to have him as their dad. And now there’s at least seven other children out there in the world benefitting from him. And there’s truly no greater gift that he could have ever given. The letter ended with: “Because Matthew chose to give the gift of life there are four people who are alive today. . .”

I remember reading that, folding the letter back up, placing it in the envelope, and never looking at it again until this month.

April is organ donation month. My boys and I were invited to a ceremony to celebrate his donation and others who also gave “the gift of life.” We won’t be making it this year, but I expressed interest in joining in years to come. This year I’ll write and share my memories of the process while it’s still fresh and hopefully open conversation with at least one of our children by the month’s end. Maybe.