Dear Mackenzie,

In the hour it took me to start writing this, six people have been added to the national waiting list for organ donation. And by the end of today, 22 people on that list will die, having waited too long for what would have been a second chance at a one-chance life. Those numbers, I suppose, aren’t as sobering when considering the lives taken daily by way of car accidents, strokes, heart attacks, or even depression-related deaths.

But there’s something about slowly being chased by death that gives it a certain tinge. Or, at most, I can only pretend to imagine. Like that dream when you’re running from something as fast as you can only to look down to see you’re stuck in the same spot, motionless. In a construed way, dealing secondhand with this hunt provides a sense of wonder and propulsion to life. How often do I consider the wider impact of my daily decisions? The jobs I have, the words I say, the things I buy, the promptings I ignore. And how often do I walk and talk my way through each day, unaware of my tangible connection to all those around me whom I scarcely acknowledge, if at all?

I bought a bottle of water and a pack of gum yesterday and when I lifted my head to take my change from the cashier, I saw your eyes in hers; the left one slightly smaller than the right.

Walking down the street, I overheard a series of laughs from a woman which echoed yours; light and free and above the noise.

And everywhere else I seem to go, I catch glimpses of your cadence or your phrases or long neck or seeping kindness in anyone, everyone I see.

Once braindead, a registered donor’s organs have about a four-hour window of usability. That means we’re most likely living near or among the person whose lungs will soon be yours. At the very least, he or she is most likely less than a three-hour drive away. He or she could be any one of those strangers I witness on a daily basis in whom bits of you sing; the cashier or the laughing lady.

He or she is most likely between the age of 20 and 50 years-old. He or she is most likely a husband and father or a wife and mother. He or she won’t see it coming. He or she will have made no preparations. He or she will most likely be sad to leave a life and loved ones behind. But he or she will hopefully come to know someday that somewhere, maybe a three-hour drive away, is a daughter, sister, niece, cousin and wife of her own who will carry on his or her breath with the added measure of life they’ve gifted her.

And maybe that teaches us another lesson that would probably otherwise pass us by; that we’re more one than we realize. In death is life and in life is death and on and on and on. And composed in every breath we breathe is everything and everyone who once was, now is, and will be. And by standing up and taking part in that eternal round, we etch parts of ourselves in the greater human story, parts of ourselves in the shading trees and woolen caps and crooked smiles of who knows how many. It assures parts of you will remain in the eternal parts of me.

Maybe, in that larger context, there are no seams between a life and another life, aside from the ones we create. Everyone’s in this breathless chase, altogether and all at once. We’re all beggars for one more day; loose in a jungle of vanity and sorrow and pleasure and culture and deadlines. We’re all one string of events and of happenchance and of grand design that leads to something I can’t yet comprehend; a place of no end because there is no beginning. And maybe that’s the point.

Whichever end of this journey we find ourselves, let us not forget the marrow from which we all stem. Let us not find ourselves on the other side of life-or-death whittling away the constant gift of our unnumbered tomorrows.  Let us, however, take your new breath and our new life and live the brash way we were intended, giving and doing and loving with dissipated fear and undetectable pride in an endless and seamless round, forgetting our place in the hunt, and drinking in, with furious abandon, the wild, wild air.

Love, H

Dear Mackenzie,

I once read that the present state – that space between the past and the future –merely describes the time it takes our minds to process real-time events, by which point the moment is already in the past. In that sense, the present is less about time and more like a horizon, an idea used to separate perceptions; an always-fleeting line between what was and what may be. I suppose that’s true. But I also suppose there has to be an exception. Or an addendum. There must be something, some state, some word that bridges the “what was” and the “what may be” with “what is”; a moment only to be experienced in the in between, yet mounting enough to shift time and land and ideas. An experience that fuses the moments and borders of your life into a single round object suspended in the hollow of your gut. I feel I’ve experienced that maybe a couple times. And I’ve come to call it tragedy.

But even so, there’s hardly a way to sum up one of the worst moments of my life – discovering your lung disease – into a single word. It doesn’t seem possible for one word to hold such authority, it would be too disturbing to use. But if there was a more fleshed-out definition for the kind of tragedy that describes crying in front of your boss, yelling at the TV during a Divorce Court episode, and binge-eating Dominoes parmesan bites at 1:00AM, then I’d use that word to describe all the moments following that one moment.

Not that it’s all horrible – like that scene in Terms of Endearment when Shirley MacLaine erupts at the nurses so they’ll give her cancer-ridden daughter an unscheduled dose of her meds (but you haven’t seen that movie, so yet another one of my post-menopausal references is sent to pasture). No, I wouldn’t label this entire experience as horrible. In fact, it’s probably the only time in my life when I’ve walked through each day with such desperate absorption; listening deeply to every sound and squeezing every moment dry. I find myself not wanting a second to slip by without acknowledgement and validation, now knowing more intimately that this brief time we all have with one another is precious and without equal.

I’ve come to desire little more than making sure you’re warm enough or cool enough, that you have a steady supply of sour gummy worms, and that we have at least 15 seconds of uninterrupted eye-contact each day – like that scene in Deep Impact when the first comet hits earth and the tidal wave is about to kill Leelee Sobieski’s parents but instead of running they stand and stare into each other’s eyes, rubbing their dirty hands on each other’s sweaty faces in what they know is their last moment together (I know you’ve seen that movie, we both cry at the same spots).

Now, don’t confuse me with Batman; tragedy doesn’t always produce a hero (and I would look crazy in black rubber pants, like a post-Thanksgiving Hefty bag). Crying more than usual and buying you gas station candy doesn’t garner me praise. In fact, I like to think I’ve become more self-serving than anything, just with complimentary lighting and one of those Beyoncé stage fans that makes me seem 12 feet tall.

No. Behind the pretense remains the fact that I want you to be okay for purely selfish reasons. I want you to be okay so you can continue to listen to my random diatribes on the importance of feminism and somehow not roll your eyes, to put my jeans on hangers even though they belong on the floor, to pretend to like my meatloaf when it ends up tasting like an Ugg boot, and to palm the back of my neck when you know I’m about to say something snarky at a dinner party with people you know I don’t like. To always give me the first bite. To take my side when you know I’m wrong. To remind me when I should call my mom. To be the bigger person. To end up getting me the same Christmas present I got you. To give our children strong names and long legs and provide them with the kind of love, patience, and guidance I could never give them on my own no matter how hard I would try to mimic you. I want us to get to our 90^th anniversary to prove that I eventually grow into my head. And I want to try getting us there with the only superpower I can fake: words.

I guess that’s all I’m really trying to say here and what I want to continue saying with these letters: “If we have the words, there’s always a chance that we’ll find the way.” And perhaps by finding the way, we’ll be led to discover and sooner accept the difference between life as it’s imagined and life as it really is; life as it must be.

So, here’s the first of many to you, my love. Unqualified and fallible as I am, I have a knowledge of your goodness. And I want to share it. For it’s the only perfect thing about me.

Love, H