Imagine this scene in your head; A man in one hospital bed is brain dead from a motorcycle accident. The family is gathered around this man. His wife is holding his hand begging him to come back, while his son is craddled in his mother's arm rubbing his eyes while tears stream down his face. The man's daughter is laying on his stomach with her arms tightly wrapped around his mid-drift. She is on her tippy toes because the hospital bed is so high and she is only eleven years old.

In the corner sits the mans father looking up at the ceiling. He is not crying, however, if you glance at his hands you know he is about to lose it. His hands are shaking so uncontrollably his daughter, the brain dead man's sister, walks up to her father and puts her arm around his shoulders and whispers in his ear, "It is okay to cry dad." Her tears are falling on her father's bald head.

The almost deceased man's mother is sitting in her wheel chair still in shock that she will bury her son before cancer takes her. She is staring at her son with deep saddness and regret. She never got a chance to say she was proud of him, even though he made choices she didn't agree with. Now it will be her son waiting at the gates of heaven for her arrival as soon as lung cancer claims her life.

The nurse comes in and says it is time. The wife screams out, "No!" The sister helps the wife, and the children are ushered out as the ventilator is turned off, he flatlines and all is quiet in the small hospital room, except for the sound of uncontrollable sobs coming from the family.

In a room a few floors down a family is staring at their beautiful daughter whom is going to die within two weeks if she doesn't get a heart. The daughter is unconscious. The parents are each holding one of her hands while her husband stares out the window at the rain pouring down wondering if he will ever be able to kiss his wife again!

He thinks of their four year old son at home and how hard it will be to tell his son that his mother is gone and he will never see her again. He goes over the conversation with his son in his head so many times that it feels as if his head will explode! How do you tell your child their mother is dead?

The woman's mother cannot imagine how she will bury her beautiful daughter. How is she going to make funeral arrangements. She is remembering the first time she held her daughter and what a beautiful baby she was. She remembers changing her diaper, rocking her to sleep, putting her hair in braids, her first day of kindergarten and her first day of High School. She remembers how beautiful she looked at prom, and her wedding. What will she do without her? How will she get through her days without their morning phone call?

The woman's father is remembering when he taught his daughter how to ride her bike. He remembers when they would get ice-cream together in the summer after watching their favorite team's baseball game. He remembers kissing her on the forehead every night before she fell asleep.

Time was running out. They were preparing for the worst when a nurse comes in and says "We found a match, your daughter is going into surgery now!"

The woman lived! She raised her son, she had another child, she talked on the phone daily to her mother, her father brought her and her son to baseball games and ice-cream in the summer, and her husband never had to tell her son he was motherless all because a man donated his heart!

Others would have lived because of his liver, his kidney, and someone could have gained sight because he donated his corneas. It is sad when a life is taken, BUT, how great is it that others can be saved!

Mark the organ donor box on your drivers license, it is the right thing to do!