The Register Guard | Randi Bjornstad
After her only child, Gary Lodge, died unexpectedly at age 34 when a blood clot lodged at the base of his brain, Brenda Cervantes searched for ways to preserve his essence in her life, including tracing his footsteps throughout Europe, where he had traveled three times.
“Traveling had helped shape who he was,” Cervantes recalls, “so I wanted to go there, too, to Spain, England, Scotland, Switzerland, France, Belgium, even Morocco, just to be in some of the places he had been and see what he had seen.”
Seven years later, she still grieves his loss. “You never get used to it, never get over it, although some days are better than others,” 59-year-old Cervantes said. “If you stop to think about it, we have no word in English — like widow or widower — for parents who lose children; I’ve even looked online to see if other cultures do, but I’ve never found one.”
She didn’t know until he died that Lodge had designated himself an organ donor, “but that sounded like the kind of thing he would want to do, and of course I wanted to follow his wishes,” Cervantes said. Within hours of his death on March 20, 2005, Lodge’s organs and tissues were harvested and made available to others who needed them.
Not long afterward, Cervantes received a thank-you letter forwarded to her by Donate Life Northwest, a nonprofit organization that promotes organ, eye and tissue donation, from the recipient of Lodge’s liver. A man who lived in Idaho and received a lung began sending her annual Christmas greetings.
Read more: http://www.registerguard.com/web/livinglifestyles/28153513-57/cervantes-heart-lodge-gary-parker.html.csp
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
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