ELLEN GOODMAN: An organ donor in the family

Sun | Opinion

This is not a comfortable story. ..But then there is no real ..way to find comfort for the ..loss of a child.

This is, however, a family story. It's about my cousin Keren Holtz, an environmentalist, a daughter, a sister and a friend who lived up to her Hebrew name: ray of light. It's about her death and her legacy of life.

I am telling it because we hear much more about organ recipients than about the families of donors, and because of organ donor week.

And I am telling it for her parents, my cousins Jane and Gerry, who were given a chance to wrest some small piece of meaning out of the utterly meaningless death of their 35-year-old daughter's death. Maybe they can make a difference.

The family story begins with an ending. On Feb. 1, 1997, Keren, a cyclist on Team Oregon, was out for an easy ride down a flat, open stretch of Portland highway. It was sunny and she was in the bike lane when a drunk driver came careening down the road and struck her with all his horsepower.

Less than two days after Jane and Gerry, back in Boston, received the call dreaded by every set of parents in the world, Keren was declared brain-dead. They found themselves and their three sons in a strange hospital in a strange city listening to the staff from the organ bank asking - with gentleness and care - "Would you consider organ donation?"

Brain-dead? Organ donor? Jane, a hospital administrator and Gerry, a retired partner from Arthur Andersen knew all the words. "I knew what brain death meant," Jane remembers with terrible clarity. "But it was as if I were hearing it for the first time. The disconnection between understanding it and accepting it is enormous."

Keren's body was still warm and breathing on life support. Her eyes were swollen open. But this shell shocked family had the strength to agree immediately and unanimously. After a long, long 12 hours - while patients on transplant waiting lists got the word-Keren was taken to the operating room.

There in the cool agricultural terminology of this world, her organs were harvested and transplanted in six other people.

Months later, my cousins sent a short and lovely description of Keren's life to the Northwest Transplant Bank addressed, "To the Recipients of K's Organs." In return, the bank told them something about the people who carry her heart, her lungs, her liver, her kidneys. These six recipients collectively had nine children.

In the anonymous exchange of letters, one kidney recipient wrote simply: "I am awed at your generosity at such a difficult time." The mother of another donee wrote "Dear Friend," telling Jane and Gerry about her own daughter's terrible illness and her own gratitude.

It has been two years since the transplants. "It is strange to think someone has Keren's organs," Jane says. "But if we had said no, six people would have died."

Not all of the patients made it. The lung donee died last fall. But from time to time my cousins get a progress report or another letter and with it a sense of connection. The letters, Gerry says, "make it very real."

Since Keren's death some rules have changed. Today, hospitals are required to notify an organ procurement organization of all deaths so that the families can at least be asked. There was an increase in organ donors last year - some 5,479 - but the real story is still about shortage. Some 4,000 people die every year waiting for a transplant. And 60,000 are waiting.

Although we have just observed National Organ and Tissue Donor Awareness Week, there is nothing I'd like to be less aware of. How many of us find it ghoulish or frightening to designate ourselves as donors or even talk about it with our families? I've learned better.

"I find it hard to use words like comfort or solace," Jane says. "It's a tremendous loss and we'll live with it the rest of our lives. But if you can't change reality, what good does it do to withhold the opportunity for others to live. I feel we would have been cheated if we had not been given this opportunity."

At a memorial service for Keren, Jane found words in a prayer book that had some meaning for her family - for ours - in the midst of great sorrow. She sent these words to the people who now live because Keren died:

"The sun also rises. The sun also sets.

Before the sun of a righteous person sets

God causes the sun of another righteous person to rise."

Ellen Goodman writes for the Boston Globe. She can be reached at the Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C., 20071.