A second chance from a child's gift

I remember the conversation of that cool October night vividly. We sat around the kitchen table, like we did most evenings, discussing the day’s events. On this particular day my father had just received his new driver’s licence and was contemplating signing the organ donor card that had been sent along with it. My younger brother Adam, 13, was especially insistent on him signing it.

“We are a recycling family,” he said. “Why would you want something to rot in the ground when somebody else could use it?” Nothing else needed to be said. Father signed his organ donor card, slid it into his wallet and that was that.

Nearly one year later Adam came home at 7 p.m. after a particularly exhilarating game of hide and seek with his friends.

He had finished all his homework, Adam told our mother, it was Friday night and all the other kids were allowed to stay out until 7:30.

Mother accepted his pleas and told him to be home by 7:30.

Adam ran up to our mother, gave her his best bear hug, looked her in the eyes and said: “I love you Mom.” And off he went.

Moments later my parents were summoned to the door by a frantic friend. “Adam is hurt, come quick,” she said.

Adam had been hiding from his friends behind a parked car, and in a fleeting moment of youthful glee took off from his spot in a mad dash for “home free” across the street. Struck down by a passing car, he never made it.

For the next three weeks Adam waged a silent battle for his life as he lay in a coma with serious head injuries.

I was sitting in a high school friend’s living room when the phone rang. “It’s for you,” said her mother. I already knew what was waiting on the other end of the line when I picked up the phone. “He’s gone isn’t he,” I said to my mother. “You had better come to hospital to say good-bye,” she replied.

After our good-byes were said the doctors took over. Carefully taking what they needed and rushing it off to anxious recipients. Adam’s heart and lungs went to a girl in Montreal, a kidney to young man in Calgary, his liver to a woman in London.

In death Adam gave eight people a second chance at life. All because of that one conversation on that cool October night.