I'm giving it all away – the rest of the story

The week after I signed up to be an organ donor, a letter came in the mail from the Department of Public Safety.

Fingering the thick envelope, I thought it must be a big thank you with some sort of certificate of appreciation.

Eager to open it, I wondered aloud, "Hm-mm, maybe I am the one-hundredth donor this month and I've won the grand prize."

Since I decided to give away all my organs, I had been floating on a cloud of satisfaction, knowing that I could help as many as 60 people.

When my number is up, maybe, just maybe, one of the 16 who die every day waiting for an organ transplant will live.
Wow, did donating my organs make me a wonderful person or what?

I’m no Mother Theresa, but definitely a qualifier for one of the lesser saints. I could see it in lights: "The deceased Paula Bosco Damon enters candidacy for sainthood." Talk about helping others. It doesn’t get any better than this.

In my usual fashion of exuberance over getting real mail in a real envelope that's glued shut, I ripped that baby open. As I quickly read the header "Department of Public Safety, 118 W. Capitol, Pierre, South Dakota 57501-2000," I totally expected praise for my selfless act of generosity.

The letter reads...

Dear Ms. Damon:
Thank you for sending your Organ and Tissue Donor Registry Form. In checking it, I noticed that you had put your doctor’s name in the "Donor's Name" field.

Therefore, I am returning the Form to you, along with a new Form so that you may enter the correct information and return it to me.

Thank you! If you have any questions, please contact me.

Sincerely,
Geneva Barkley
In disbelief, I flipped to the next page and quickly scanned my completed Form. At the bottom, Geneva marked with a yellow highlighter exactly where I had screwed up. The Form reads "Donor's Name," not "Doctor's Name"!

I could not believe it! I had donated my doctors organs, every last one of them, along with all of his tissue without even knowing it!
I donated his heart and heart valves, his lungs and liver, his kidneys and pancreas, his intestines and corneas, even his skin and bones, and I didn’t even ask him.

As every ounce of pride drained out of me, I felt dejected, deflated and disappointed by my silly mistake. I tried to laugh it off –ha, ha, ha. I laughed some more, ha, ha, ha, but I felt so embarrassed. Way to go, Paula.

I had to quickly blame my mistake on something. My eyestrain! That’s it! My job as a writer and editor made me donate my doctor’s organs. Plus, who in the world could read that teeny-weeny 10-point-size font on the Form.

I couldn’t find one of my gazillion pairs of reading glasses and filled it out in a blur. I was so distracted by CNN that it’s a wonder I didn’t donate Wolf Blitzer’s organs.

Prior to receiving this piece of news, I had been strutting around with an interior glow, and outwardly, I was clipping along with gleeful lilt in my step.

Similar to being baptized, confirmed and married, by agreeing to devote my organs had changed me in an indefinable way.

I have learned in life, and in golf, that a do-over can be healthy for your game. So I put on my reading glasses, got out my 4-inch diameter, 3-X power magnifying glass, filled out the Form and mailed it, again. Now, I thought, this time I hope it's official.

(For more information about organ donation, please call 1-888-5-DONATE or 1-888-5-366-2833, or visit www.organdonor.gov.)


2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

It's going to be a great day because I'm giving it all away

There's a note on my driver's license that says, "Donor." It used to say "Eye Donor," but I have graduated to donating all of my organs to someone in need when I kick the bucket. Nothing to lose. Everything to gain.

I know it might sound a little odd, but I'm excited about being an organ donor. I like the idea of someone else seeing better, feeling better or living better when my time comes.

Now that I'm giving it all away, I have a warm fuzzy feeling knowing others will have my heart, heart valves, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, intestines, corneas, skin, bone and/or connective tissue; although, they may not want my heart with its murmur, leaky valve and aneurismal aorta.
　
What made me decide? My brother-in-law Tony is alive today because of an organ donor. That convinced me to be a donor, too.

I went online to organdonor.gov and I learned some amazing facts – like donating my organs, bones and tissue could save or improve the lives of as many as 50 to 60 people. Wow, who would have thought I had that much life in me?

I also learned that at any given time nearly 80,000 people are waiting for organs. Every 13 minutes, a new name is added to the national waiting list and 16 people die every day waiting for organs.

On the website organdonor.gov, I registered with my state's donor registry by printing the South Dakota Resident Organ and Tissue Donor Form. I filled it out and mailed it to Department of Public Safety, Driver Licensing Program, 118 West Capitol Avenue, Pierre, SD 57501-2000. It was that simple!

I printed a donor card at www.organdonor.gov, and with Brian as my witness, I signed it and kept it in my wallet.

If you don't have a Brian to be your witness, ask around: a family member, a friend, the mail carrier, the UPS driver, the garbage man, your next door neighbor, a Jehovah’s Witness at your door, the kids playing street football out front, your Avon lady, the meter reader, your Mary Kay representative or the Boy Scout selling popcorn.

Next, I designated my decision on my driver’s license when I renewed it.

Signing this form means when I die, a donation coordinator will obtain my medical history from my family and conduct tests to see if my organs will work in someone else’s body? Then, all my good stuff - organs, bones and tissue - will go to someone in need. (Yee haw!)

The second best part of this gift of life is that it will not cost me a penny, since all organ donation expenses are covered by the transplanting geniuses. I am not cheap, but I like a good bargain.

Every day is a great day, knowing my organ donor status is marked on the bottom right-hand corner of my driver’s license. Is yours?
　
(For more information about organ donation, please call 1-888-5-DONATE or 1-888-5-366-2833 and follow the prompts.)

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

It's gotta hurt so good to be real

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. – George Eliot

At the risk of looking tacky, I'm thinking about putting up my Christmas lights in October, while temperatures are pretty close to perfect.

With the mercury rising to about 65 degrees by day and dipping to only 48 or 50 in the evening, I could decorate the whole house in Bermuda shorts and a sleeveless shirt.

Since the sun does not set until 8 p.m. or so, I'd have all day to twist garland, tie bows and string lights, while sipping lemonade and wiping sweat from my brow.

Why not? Retail stores are stocked for Christmas, and I heard holiday music on the radio the other day. I even thought I saw jolly old Saint Nick on TV. No, wait a minute...that was former Senator Tom Delay in his jump suit on Dancing with the Stars.

Every year at this time, as each day slips by, I think about how I should be dragging out boxes marked "XMAS."

But then I wonder how will I get into the spirit of Christmas if I have to douse myself with bug repellent before venturing outside.

It's just that stringing holiday lights in the warmth of long harvest days seems way too painless for me.

In my opinion, it has to hurt to be genuine holiday decorating.

When is the right time to decorate, you ask? Well, let me count the ways.

You know it’s time to put up outdoor decorations when...

You anticipate spending four hours or more fumbling around in cheerless darkness searching for every gosh darn plastic wreath and all those little hooks to hang lights from the eaves.

You put on three or four layers of thermal clothing, you can hardly walk, fall down, can't get back up and cry for help.

Your Christmas cards shatter when you accidentally drop them.

Your nose is running and it takes four blocks to catch it.

A glacier begins to pass by your house.

Your grandmother's dentures chatter all by themselves.

You actually don't mind spilling your cup of coffee all over you lap.

And you immediately regret waiting until the cold dark reaches of December to decorate.

Even after all of this, you know for certain it’s time to put up your outdoor decorations when you have an unexplainable feeling of peace as you string lights, tie bows, hang wreaths and so on....

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

Finding my way to Saint Eusebius

MapQuest takes me along I-80 from Indiana, east past Youngstown, Ohio, and then onto Pennsylvania Highway 38. I turn right on Emlenton Clintonville Road, left on Main Street and onto Main Hill Road, which becomes Queenstown Road. I veer left onto PA 68, which becomes Clarion Street and left again on East 2nd Street.

I am trying to find Saint Eusebius Cemetery in East Brady, Pennsylvania, where my parents are buried.

On my way through the Allegheny Mountains, I experience recurring bouts of grief. This is the closest physically I will be to my parents since their ashes were transported here from California a little more than a year ago. This is my first visit.

East Brady is an unassuming little town in Western Pennsylvania, hidden away down several winding roads. It possess all the amenities of not-so-remote places. Quick shops, pizza places, bars and beauty salons busily line Main Street, which skirts a mountain ridge along the broad and meandering Allegheny River.

Not far from here, my dad and mom were born: Dad in Rimersburg, Pennsylvania, Mom in Punxsutawney. It is in this area they went to school, married, started our family, and this is where they wanted to be buried.

As I look for signs for the cemetery, I imagine every adult child at one time or another doing this: searching for that final resting place of their parents.

After getting lost, backtracking, stopping for directions and calling my uncle for the exact location, I finally arrive at Saint Eusebius Cemetery, a medium-sized stretch perched on a hillside with pastoral views below.

Once inside the iron gates, and finally locating their plot, I slowly read their names, dates of birth, dates of death and cannot imagine how 85 years of life passed through them so quickly.

I kneel as close as I can get to their headstones, stroking their names, running my fingers along the rough edges of the granite marker. It is now clear that this is where they had been journeying to all along and I am overwhelmed.

I have traveled to this place more than 1,000 miles from my home in South Dakota.
I want them to see me, a dutiful middle child of six, paying homage to all their work in bringing me life.

I want them to see me here, missing them while honoring their wishes to be placed side-by-side near where they started life. I am here.

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

Hobo signs reveal character and more

"Still your children wander homeless; still the hungry cry for bread…." - Albert Bayly

"My house has a hobo sign that says, 'Generous man lives here,'" my soft-spoken friend Michael uttered at church one day. We were discussing demonstrating acts of charity among strangers in our adult Sunday school class.

"Well, they actually haven't painted a sign on my house, but word has spread among the hobo community that I'll give them a hot cup of soup if they’re hungry and a shirt if they need it," Michael continued with a humble twinkle in his eyes. "I don't give them money, though. And no booze. Just the basics."

Hoboes passing through Sioux City, Iowa, have been known to congregate in Cook Park and in a wooded area along railroad tracks parallel to Interstate 29 North, explained Michael, himself a Sioux City resident.

As I listened to him speak about hoboes, I was captivated. I learned that hobo signs are an essential way a dispersed group of people stay connected.

They have no phones, no email, no way to communicate, except for word-of-mouth and cryptic symbols left behind on fences, walls, houses and barns.

Simply put, hobo signs are instructions on where to go for food and shelter, how to stay out of trouble, how to navigate through life.

A piece of string tied to a tree or a fence stands for "asked for and received."

A plastic bag filled with rocks means you will come away with more than you need. The rocks symbolize material goods instead of money. Others leave behind arrows made of sticks, leading to a hot meal or a safe place to stay the night.

A squiggly horizontal line stands for, "Poor man lives here." A top hat next to a large triangle means just the opposite, "A wealthy man lives here."

A vertical line with three perpendicular lines diminishing in size with the smallest at the top symbolizes "officer." A smiley face tells others "Can sleep here."

Five circles mean "good chance to get money." A simple table means sit-down food. A cross? "Talk religion and get food." A "T" stands for "food for work."

Two circles, one on top of the other with three small triangles beside the circles are the sign for "kind woman." My favorite is a horizontal rectangle with a jagged line inside, which means "Bad-tempered owner."

According to hobo historian Fran DeLorenzo, author of The Hobo Minstrel, one or more signs can have the same message, and there can be slightly different meanings for a sign used in different parts of the U.S.

You may have noticed hobo signs and only dismissed them as litter caught up by the wind or child's play.

As I delved into hobo signs, I grew enamored by their simplicity and power and wondered what sign hoboes would place outside my house or yours.


2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

It’s not pretty where my heart still resides…

It's not pretty. Stripped of all of its former beauty and grace, my childhood home, now abandoned, stands gaunt – a total wreck. Once a gorgeous century-old house, decorated with soft lights and lovely draperies, blooming rhododendron skirting the foundation, it stands ravaged from total neglect.

When we return to the place from which we came, we long to see our memories in tact. This was not my experience when visiting 33 Pennsylvania Avenue in Lakewood, New York just a few weeks ago.

I’ve been back several times over the last 37 years to find the house in disrepair, contrary to my parents’ attentive care. However, this was the worst.

Sitting idle for years with only telltale signs of renovation, the place stares back at me like an unpreserved corpse with its hollow eyes, boney physique, deteriorating lines and decomposing flesh.

Windows broken out, rotting sideboards, swaying eaves, boarded up doorways, it has been purged of anything recognizable. It has no pulse.

My home, where as a child I imagined my future, is gone, save its idle skeleton, which stands weary from disuse.

Peering through the oversized French picture windows into my living room, I behold a place that once contained my dreams, held my hopes, along with disappointments, that now is stripped to only bones: walls with plaster missing, floors splintered and cracked, ceilings that are water stained.

Everywhere I look, I witness the decay and degradation. This once triumphant abode – a Victorian queen – now defeated with unimaginable damage.

Straining hard to remember sights and sounds of its formidable years, I am staring deep into a grave, which has entombed frolicking innocence – dancing, singing, playing, sharing, being.

My heart grows larcenous with a sudden urge to pick up a stone, a brick, a piece of clapboard – even a chip of glass – and steal it away. My soul thunders with anger over reckless, neglectors who have left it bare.

I silently watch for any signs of life preserved, above the fray, as though squinting through a thick, slowly lifting fog. Secretly desiring this corpse to rise, I summon its former beauty and grace.

As I pass through my backyard, I step over the broken glass, make my way around the side yard, through overgrown grass and back again, to the front. I am in a funeral procession, pacing slowly to the dead beat of despair.

As I depart, sadness besieges me. I solemnly wave goodbye, as with a therible of incense, blessing this house as once mine, while smoke from burning embers of yesterday rise and float away – forever gone.

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

Dishing up little bit of sugar at the Leavenworth

Her name is Saundra. I first met her at the Leavenworth, a throwback diner in Omaha, where she waits tables.

Her attire was that of a classic waitress. She wore a dress-uniform, complete with a white chiffon apron tied in a neat bow around her waist. The only thing missing was a cap-like band on her head.

"How ya’all doin'?’ she greeted my family, while handing each of us an over-sized plastic-coated menu. After we ordered and she began serving our meals, Saundra paused at our table, head bowed while our son Joel finished the table grace.

"AMEN!" she exclaimed. "Here’s your ketchup, Preacher Man," she said, offering him a full bottle of Heinz.

During the course of our time at the Leavenworth, Saundra’s weathered beauty and velvety deep voice spoke phrases, as if sweet sonnets, that drew me in, like root command calling me to a place I wanted to remain.

"Do you have enough to eat, Sweetheart? Do you want more to drink, Baby? Honey, can I get you any dessert? Ready for your check, Sugar?"

The way Saundra addressed each of us was so endearing that a powerful spirit of agape love produced a sort of giving circle that she embodied.

After my brief interaction with Saundra during lunch that day, I found myself in the firm hold of her infectious kindness. I wanted to know more about her and asked if she would be willing to share her story with me.

"Honey, I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell my story for years."

In our follow-up phone conversation, I learned more about Saundra – the person. She is no longer married and lives with her aging parents.

Her ex-husband was alcoholic, and Saundra, now 54, was a frequent target of his rage. "One night," she recounted, "he nearly killed me with a tire iron." She reported the attack to the police; her husband was arrested, sent to jail, where he died.

Saundra breathed a deep sorrowful sigh of relief that day, but her son, who was 10 at the time, took it hard.

"If you just would have let him walk away, I’d still have a father," her son carried on.

"What kind of woman would I have been if I had stayed?" Saundra told me. "He hit me on my ankle, on my knee, on my thigh and on my head. I fell, but he would not let go. He had the devil in his eyes, and I thought, ‘My god, he’s going to kill me.’ I tried to protect myself. I called out the name of Jesus."

This is only a small part of Saundra’s back-story. There is much more to her life growing up in America’s heartland, where she confronted racial discrimination.

"I’ve had a lot of unfair things happen to me," Saundra concluded after relaying several personal instances. "But don’t get me wrong – I am truly and richly blessed."

"Saundra, before we hang up, I just want to say that you have the gift of exhortation. You lift people up. You make them feel so good!"

"You know," she replied, "I didn’t think I had any gifts. I have been searching and praying, asking God to show me what they are. Now, my prayer has been answered."

As we concluded our talk, Saundra said, "I only have one request of you," continuing with graceful charm. "If anyone asks you who I am, please tell them that I am a child of God."

Saundra is the embodiment of all that is determined and hopeful – in this world.

So, the next time you are on Omaha’s South Side, you might want to pay a visit to the Leavenworth Diner and ask to be seated Saundra’s section.

Whatever you go by – Sweetheart, Baby, Honey, or even Sugar – you will not be disappointed.

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.