April is a Busy Month

April has always been a busy month for me what with birthdays and being the Parking Chairman for my kennel club's show in May. Nowadays, there are a few more things added to the month.

April is National Donate Life Month. I am a huge advocate for organ donation. I volunteer whenever I can and I have met some wonderful, amazing people while doing so. The need for organ donation is great and it is so easy to help, all you have to do is sign a donor card or the back of your driver's license, then be sure to let your family know you want to donate your organs. According to UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing, as of today at 6:00 pm, there are 101,792 candidates awaiting an organ transplant!!

(My mother Jerri, Christmas 2003)

My beautiful mother Jerri, died suddenly Aug 7, 2004 from a ruptured brain aneurysm and she was an organ donor. I know for a fact, there is a lady in North Carolina who spent years on dialysis waiting for a kidney. She has a son who was planning her funeral instead of planning for her to watch him graduate high school. There is a man in New York, who had to stop working and was living a life of pain, watching his family grieve for him while waiting for a liver. There is an older lady in Tennessee and a gentleman in South Carolina who couldn't see their children, the beauty of a sunrise or spring flowers blooming. ALL of those folks received Mom's organs! There are countless others who received her tissue donations as well!

(Mom with one of her hand-fed baby birds she raised.)

The lady in NC did indeed get to see her son graduate and by now has also seen her daughter graduate. I hope she has also gotten her horse that she was looking forward to getting. The man in NY has gone back to work and is enjoying running and golfing. And I could just imagine how the folks that received Mom's corneas are living! Imagine, seeing your child's or grandchild's face for the first time or watching the sunrise!

Losing my mother was the hardest thing I have ever gone through, the pain is still great, especially on those special days, Mother's Day, Christmas, my birthday, etc. BUT knowing that someone else is living and enjoying life because of Mom eases that pain somewhat. Mom would have been 66 years old this coming Mon. April 20. Yet another day that makes this month a hard month for me. When those special days roll around I find myself thinking of her organ recipients and wishing like crazy that I could hear from them. I think I'm ready to write them a letter, let them know a little about Mom and see how they are doing.

(Mom, 4 months before she passed away)

According to the policies and protocol surrounding organ donation, recipients and the donor family can indeed get in touch with one another IF both parties want that. Either side would write a letter then send it on to the donor organization that handled our services. Mine would be Mountain Region Donor Services. These are the most caring, wonderful people I have met. I have made quite a few friends through them, both during Mom's donation process and through volunteering for them. So I think I will write something to her recipients and hope that they want to communicate with me.

I've been told by other recipients it was hard for them to contact their donor families. They were afraid of bringing more pain on the family or opening up a wound that was beginning to heal. They have also told me they didn't have words to say to the donor families. Thank You just doesn't seem like enough to them. I promise you, I am not looking for a thank you anyway. I am looking for a way to see that Mom's organs have made a difference in someone's life. I mean I know it has, I just want to SEE it or READ of it. Wish me luck that I will get a response.

This post grows long and believe me, I could go on and on and on about this subject. Yet another reason I volunteer for MRDS and try to get the word out about donation.
If you would like to know more about it, if you are contemplating donating your organs and have questions, please, please, PLEASE feel free to ask me anything about it. I promise I will help you all I can and if I don't have the answer right then, I will find out for you and get back to you. I promise.

For now, I'm out of here and I'll be back with you next time with another cause I care about, you see, April is also Autism Awareness Month.

(My second cousin Kolby, the reason I support Autism Awareness)

Be Blessed,

I WAS going to start....

a series of posts outlining the steps involved in my stained glass project I'm working on.

I spent the better part of the early afternoon downloading pictures off my camera onto the computer. I had a ton of them, pictures of work being done on our new house, pictures of the new foster dog we have here, pictures of my glass project I'm working on, lots of pictures I'm here to tell you.
Well, I managed to get about half of them downloaded just like they should have, but I'm not sure what happened next. I was adding all the stained glass photos into my folder so I could do a series of posts describing the process from start to finish. Somehow I managed to lose all the glass pictures without them being downloaded! Makes me so mad!
I guess, I'll have to start over with the next project I work on, and hope I don't mash the wrong button on this machine and lose everything again. Wish me luck.

I have not felt well all day, my attitude has been less than award winning to say the least and the picture problems didn't help it one little bit. I'm grumpy, my joints and my back just ache like a miserable toothache, and I feel that dreaded wave of depression over my mother's death coming on. My birthday (which is next week), her birthday, my son's birthday, Mother's Day, the holidays and the anniversary of her death brings the depression on like a tidal wave. I HATE it and I wish it would ease up on me. It's been nearly 5 years since Mom passed away and I swear it's still just as painful today as it was back in Aug. '04. Please keep me in your prayers as I fight through this yet again. And those of you reading this that still have your mothers, hug them, hang out with them, take them to lunch, enjoy them and tell them you love them!! They won't be there forever, enjoy them while you have them.

I leave you with a picture of my beautiful mother Jerri, with one of her baby birds she raised.

Until next time,

The Invisible Hands

I opened my email this morning to find something that really warmed my heart and thought I would share with you. Thank you Sandi for sharing this with me, I love it!

The Invisible Hands
It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I'm on the phone and ask me a question. Inside I'm thinking, 'Can't you see I'm on the phone?' Obviously, not. No one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all.
I'm invisible. The invisible Mom. Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this?
Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ask, 'What time is it?' I'm a satellite guide to answer, 'What number is the Disney Channel?' I'm a car to order, 'Right around 5:30, please.'
I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated sum a cum laude - but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She's going; she's going; she is gone!
One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, I brought you this. It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe . I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her inscription:' To Charlotte , with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.'
In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work. No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we have no record of their names.
These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished. They made great sacrifices and expected no credit. The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.
A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, 'Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it.' And the workman replied, 'Because God sees.'
I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, 'I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you've done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't see right now what it will become.'
At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride.
I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on.
The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.
When I really think about it, I don't want my son to tell the friend he's bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, 'My Mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table.' That would mean I'd built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, to add, 'you're gonna love it there.'
As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.