Today (Friday, this is being written) I had planned to take personal time off from the job to do some project work I had been saving for the elusive free moment that never comes, and I wanted to do grocery shopping. That seems so long ago, writing this at midnight in a hotel in Columbia, Mo., after a day that went awry from the moment of the phone call that woke me to a different, harsher reality.
The call was from a faraway doctor who was charged with the difficult job of telling me that my brother Kurt, 51, was dying. In medical terms, he already was brain dead, due to a massive cerebral hemorrhage, but the machines were still “woo-wooshing” oxygen into his body and his heart was still beating, so you can guess what she called to tell me and then to ask my permission to do.
Kurt had been admitted under the name “Pointer,” code word for “John Doe” at the University of Missouri Hospital. The police had not told the ambulance driver his identity in the rush of thinking they were sending a likely heart attack victim to the hospital, though they had his wallet and had talked to the friend who had made the 9-1-1 call after my brother collapsed at the friend’s house. Hours later, someone at the hospital finally recognized him and called his previous emergency number, and 2+2 finally equaled four (my phone rang).
I gave permission for the discontinuation of assisted life, as Kurt would have abhorred one minute on a respirator if there was no hope afterwards for independent living. Then I gave permission for them to “harvest” his viable organs, adding another seven or so hours of assisted existence to the equation, as there are tests to be done before that can happen.
My husband packed as quickly as I did and we immediately got on the road. About eight hours later, we stood in an intensive care hospital room. I was shocked at how absent Kurt seemed, though his chest continued to rhythmically rise and fall. Then, a minute later, I was panicked at how “present” he felt, as if he might open his eyes if only someone said the magic words or shook him hard enough.
I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, standing at his bed, and I don’t know which “here” or “gone” sensation was the hardest to bear, given the circumstances. You get to a point where “hard” loses its degree. It’s just all hard.
The lab tests were sent to Kansas City by courier. The transplant team wouldn’t officially let him die or operate until they knew the weather would assure the organs could be airlifted wherever needed the most in the nation. Everything had to synch up for any chance of success.
There were forms to fill out, endless questions about medical and social history, and known health risk factors, and then an estimate of end-time: 10 p.m. However, in every minute between “hello” and “goodbye,” there was the kindness of every staff person involved; the medical and social service personnel showed great respect for my brother’s helpless condition and my emotional bottomless pit.
During the early evening, the transplant team wrapped him in a special quilt, which was later given to me to keep, and they also gave me a medal declaring him a donor hero that could be put on a tombstone. I was allowed to cut and keep a lock of his hair. I was given free access to him to sit with him and hold his hand and whisper my last secrets to the quiet man I had often, in days of old, rocked to sleep – when he was a newborn and I was a proud 8-year-old big sister.
I once had a lot of responsibility for his upbringing, and as we got older together, there had been secrets aplenty between us about his sneaking off to the creek or my sneaking a boyfriend into the house. I kept his secrets and he kept mine. We might fuss and fight and even knock each other on our butts occasionally, but that was between us, and no one else ever came between us.
Now he’s a man, but not an old man. I saw only my beautiful gray-haired brother, looking like he looked when he slept as a white-blond headed child.
Tonight at 10:45 p.m., the transplant team got the signal to proceed. My husband and I were allowed to be present. The doctor began with a minute of silence in respect for the life Kurt led and the people who loved him, and the selfless and final act he had committed to (they checked with DMV to verify it was a wish expressed on the missing driver’s license, as it was). The doctor then informed me of everything that would happen, and they administered heavy doses of pain medication before removing the respirator. Then, in the final minutes, I was allowed to hold his hand, stroke his beautiful face and quieted chest, and kiss him goodbye.
The doctor, before wheeling him in to an operating room to remove my brother’s kidneys, promised me, “I will care for him as if he were my own.”
Now I’m in a Holiday Inn hotel, still trying to believe this day came, still trying to make sense of it all. I pray the future transplants work and that I get that magic letter in a couple weeks telling me the final outcome (as was promised). I’m holding on to that, in my search for meaning tonight.
Tomorrow or the next day, after the coroner and funeral home have their turn, I will hold Kurt’s ashes in my fingertips at the site of the biggest burr oak tree in Missouri, a tree all of his friends and family know because he has taken us all there, to his favorite place by the river, numerous times. A tree that, he told me on one of our many visits there, was once notorious as “the hanging tree” and later as a magical tree, and now is known far and wide as nature’s glory. Twelve people can surround it, holding hands, and have to stretch their arms as wide as possible to do it. His friends will gather there, and his best friend (a minister) will say the words, and then we all will say more words about Kurt and his life, and we all will stretch our arms around the tree and cry and hug people as well as bark, and cry more.
Then I will take a handful of ash back with me to Bushnell, Ill., where our Webster clan will be waiting at my mother’s grave, with my other brother’s grave next to it, and we will return Kurt to that holy ground so our family has a place to kneel and keep him close.
In this minute, he remains closest to me. I sealed him in my heart with that final kiss and I will take him forward with me all the days of my own life. He is in that special place with my son Daniel and my mother, Joyce, and my father, Lawson, and my brother Robert, and my Nana Lucille and my Grandad Kenny and my Uncle Butch and my nephew Matt.
Tonight Kurt is with all of them, and he is with God, and yet he is with me, too.
So be it. Amen.
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