When Your Loved One is an Organ Donor, Part 3 of 3: His Eyes are Still Seeing

Trigger Warning: death of a spouse, death of a loved one, medical procedures, autopsy report, organ donation

I like to have answers to whatever I can have answers to. I know that I can’t for everything, but if there is an answer to something—why not learn it?

“I read Matt’s autopsy last night,” I confided.

“Do you like to torture yourself?”

“I don’t know, maybe. It was pretty heavy.” After a long pause I added, “I didn’t read it immediately. I waited a few nights and prepped my mind for it.”

Sometimes learning the truth of things hurts a lot more than creating your own theory. The truth often rips off the bandaid we all walk around with. I honestly didn’t think it would be all that devastating to read. I knew it would be awful, but I didn’t think it would wreck me. I already knew he was dead. I watched it happen. I planned his funeral. At the time of receiving his autopsy report, his urn was sitting in my bedroom. I knew he died a somewhat violent death. I examined his body while it was lying in that bed. I spoke to the doctors and told them not to butter anything up for me. I watched his eyes lose light. I watched the strongest man I know turn into a mere body.

I read the report. I viewed the diagrams. There was definitely some information I wasn’t aware of, but nothing very shocking. I skimmed over a lot of sections. I could feel the weights that had lifted just long enough to open that envelope slowly start piling back on. But the lines I noticed and the words that brought me some comfort were the ones that referred to different body parts, different organs, body cavities, and wrote: removed for donation. There was much more donated than what the letter I received a couple months earlier described. That letter only let me know what lives were saved; this report included what was used to help and enhance lives, like his eyes. I can picture his eyes from the very first day I met him all the way through to the last day I saw him. They are always what I see first when I think of him. They are beautiful, ever-changing eyes. And they were donated. Someone, somewhere is wearing his eyes.

It was in learning that detail that I closed the papers up and sealed them back into their envelope. It was in reading that autopsy report, combined with the letter from the organ donation coordinator, mixed with my memories of watching the doctors determine his time of death that I fully realized that our bodies are just that—bodies. What keeps running when our souls leave can possibly be used for someone else. Like a machine. A replacement part. It might be twisted and morbid to think of it like that, but thinking of it like that helps me through each day.

After a few weeks of reviewing those details, my youngest sister came to visit us. Once the boys were sleeping, I offered her the report and she read through it and mentioned things she noticed. I told her what I noticed. As we were discussing my husband’s deceased body, I could picture him holding her in his arms. I could see him sitting in the big, green chair in my mom’s living room holding my sister when she was a tiny baby. It was summertime and she was only wearing a diaper. I was babysitting my little sisters and he was visiting next door when he heard her crying. He came over and offered to help me. He took her from my arms and sat with her until she fell back asleep. I sat across from him, he looked at me with those eyes of his, and we laughed about how he was able to soothe her almost instantly.

And now, as my sister was reading me biology facts that she’s learned in college and translating them to this report, I could see him holding her. He still had a full head of hair. He had a pure, genuine smile. He had soft eyes and those long arms babies love that grew stronger and stronger through the years. He was wearing a navy T-shirt and she was only wearing a diaper. And I realized how long this man had been in my life. It was staring me in the face. It felt like he was sitting in our bed with us. So I told my sister we could stop reading that now. And we closed it back up and tucked it away.

After putting the report back in a safe spot, we continued talking about Matt and life and death and everything in-between. And then my printer, which sits on the desk next to my bed, started making noise. It lit up and sounded as if it was printing us a document. The same thing it always does on nights when I feel overwhelmingly empty and lost. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe it’s not. But my sister and I looked at each other, acknowledged what was happening, and just loved and laughed.