Harvest

I got a crash course in organ donation a few days ago. There were some interesting medical and legal details but it was a simple bit of terminology that stayed with me. The removal of the kidneys or the heart or the lungs from a dead person for the purpose of transplantation is called "harvesting." I thought about digging up potatoes. I thought about the long hours of careful tending that lead up to a bountiful harvest...sowing the seeds, plowing the field. I thought about the Neil Young song Harvest, with that one line about "your mother in so much pain."

It's strange to imagine someone else walking around with your brother's heart.

A day later I sat in my car in the rain waiting to pick up my daughter from school. I was listening to World Cafe and the words of Woody Guthrie came at me through the radio... "I never dread the day I will die, cause my sunset is somebody's morning sky."