KORONER’S KORNER: STILL LEARNING

Lessons learned this last week; as I continue to learn and I recalled how someone had told me when you stop learning or stop wanting to learn, you stop living.  I will begin this week with a lesson taught to me by an older gentleman, whom I consider to be a mentor in my life.  He and I are extremely open to one another about mistakes we have made in our lives.  It is reassuring when I hear him recount some of the mistakes he has made in his life, because I have made the same mistakes, so it does not make me feel so bad.  That prompted me to write the below article.

After writing so much about my son’s death and my continued dealing with his belongings even after almost 16 years, I had planned on writing about one of the challenges we immediately found ourselves facing after his death, that of writing an obituary describing the life of someone you loved.  We sat with friends and family late into the night and I wanted to write about how hard it was.  Even as I write these words, the memories they evoke make tears flow down my cheeks and I find it hard to focus on the letters as I type.

I told one of my older friends about my ideas to write about obituaries, but it did not take long to stir the feelings in his 85-year-old heart of the events of decades ago when his wife passed away.  His face and tone told me that the pain had still not gone away, even at his age.  Then he told me that one of the hardest, most grueling parts of her death was the phone call he received because she had chosen to be an organ donor.  She had made this choice willingly to help someone else continue to live their lives when she could no longer live her own life.

He recounted how he had to sit through a tortuous thirty minutes of questions about his wife, all right after she had just passed away.  He told me I needed to write about how that process goes and what is involved so that perhaps others would have at least a little of the sting taken out of the pain by knowing ahead of time what would happen in the event their loved one had chosen to be an organ donor.

So, all throughout the day Friday the 13th, I called Organ Procurement Organizations (OPO’s).  I will try to use the language they use to familiarize folks with the words and phrases the OPO’s use so just understanding what they are saying does not become another obstacle and challenge you must overcome when the time comes.

I first spoke with the Missouri Organ and Tissue Donor Program, Donate Life Missouri Registry, Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS), the same state organization that governs Coroners and Medical Examiners in Missouri.  Their website is Home – Missouri Organ Donor (https://donatelifemissouri.org/).  They were extremely helpful in steering me in the right direction.  One of the national organizations that sets standards is the American Association of Tissue Banks.

That also led me to the major organizations that manage organ transplant services in Missouri: Midwest Transplant Services in Kansas City, Mid-America Transplant Services in St. Louis.  When it comes to eyes, Missouri Eye Bank Organ Donation Companies like Saving Sight, Vision Share, and Midwest Transplant Network are key players in the eye bank sectors.

By the evening, after speaking with multiple organizations who agreed they would send me more information next week, it was clear that I would not be able to intelligently address the issue of organ donation in a quickly drafted article in one day.

So, the purpose of this article is to let you all know that the next article will be on organ donation and the challenges it involves and hopefully I will have enough room to include their fifty-question survey that the next of kin must answer before the donation can take place.  Then the article after that will be what I had originally intended to write this week, a guide to writing obituaries, something the funeral homes have experience in and are much more qualified than I to provide guidance.  I am sure they will happily provide advice, so the funeral homes and newspapers are not overwhelmed with obituaries so long that they are hard, if not impossible to publish.

It also provides an opportunity for me to write about how I continue to learn and about how much I do not know.  The gentleman who educated me about the need to write on such an important part really helped me.  I had not previously considered the difficulties of dealing with organ donation so hopefully that article will help you all as well.

If anyone else has ideas that I have failed to consider that they either experienced in the death of a loved one, or has questions I have failed to address, you can either contact the editor and they will contact me, or you can contact me directly at coroner@cedarcountymo.gov or write me at Coroner, 113 South Street, Stockton, MO  64785.

I hope that I am helpful to the community and to individuals who, no matter how much they try to deny it, will eventually face the situations I write about.  It is often extremely emotional for me just writing these articles as they bring back a lot of old memories.  But I feel like it is worth it when someone tells me how they appreciate my articles and how I have made things clear of which they previously were not aware.  Taking some of the unknown out of our lives helps us all face the future a little easier.

Respectfully and

humbly submitted,

Danny Leo Green, Coroner, Cedar County