My daughter Virginia was an organ and tissue donor when she was two days old, in 2004. I know that her heart went to an eight month old girl who lived in Ohio at the time of the donation. I could write a letter and send it to Lifeline of Ohio, to be sent to the recipient family, and if both my family and the recipients wanted to, we could meet. I've sat down many, many times to write that letter and just couldn't find the right words to convey everything Ginny meant and still means to me. So I never have.

Today I walked in the Dash for Donation, which is a 5k to raise money and awareness for organ donation put together by Lifeline of Ohio. I decorated a race bib with "My daughter Ginny gave her heart". During the race another runner noticed my bib and came over to thank me because her daughter was a heart recipient. We chatted for a few minutes while we walked, and I found out that her daughter was 11, and therefore too old to have been Ginny's heart recipient.

I struggled throughout our brief conversation with the competing urges to ask when the donation had occurred to see if the girl had received Ginny's heart, or to just not know. I realized that I didn't want to know. I don't have elaborate fantasies about the child who carries Ginny's heart, or imagine what her life is like (very much).  I do surreptitiously look at the children around me when I participate in Lifeline events, and even check the dates on the various posters, buttons, and t-shirts that people wear to announce their connection to organ donation. I haven't run across the recipient family yet, but I also don't yearn to meet them.

I think people are surprised when they ask if I know the recipient family and find out that I don't have a strong desire to meet them. They probably imagine some wonderful heartfelt scene where the girl and her family thank me profusely for the extraordinary gift they received. But after that initial scene, it would be awkward. Very awkward. Because after they share the amazing things that ___ was able to do because she received a heart transplant from Ginny, what could I say to move the conversation along? "Yeah, she sure kicked a lot..." They probably don't want to hear about her birth, or the horrible days in the hospital while we waited to hear her fate. They've lived through that tragic scene, but their ending was different-happy.

I don't get the fairytale ending. I never get to hold my little girl again, smell her hair, kiss her head, whisper that I love her. I never had the opportunity to give her a bath, dress her up in sweet dresses, watch her grow up. I've accepted that, but it still hurts every day to know that she's gone forever.

It helps tremendously to know that another mother doesn't have to go through this pain because of Ginny, and another little girl is alive. Her life wasn't in vain, she made a difference. Not just to me and my family and friends, but to others in the world. I share Ginny's story often, and encourage people to be organ and tissue donors. It hurts a little bit less to know that a piece of Ginny is out there, her heart beating inside another child's chest.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- e. e. cummings ~

(Complete Poems, 1904-1962)