W
arm, friendly, attractive, gifted. That described Julie, one of my all-time favorite students from human development courses I taught at the University of Nebraska. She was a delightful person and an ideal student.
I remember Julie coming to the front of the classroom after class one autumn day in September 1976. While most of the other students hurriedly left to enjoy the balmy weather or to relax at the student union, Julie remained to ask questions about the next week’s exam. She had obviously already done some serious studying. Several other students overheard Julie’s questions and joined our conversation. Julie’s winsome personality drew people to her.
But Julie never made it to the exam. The day after our conversation, she was struck by a large truck as she biked through an intersection near campus. I was stunned to hear that Julie lay unconscious and motionless in a hospital opposite the campus where only hours before she was talking with friends, laughing, making plans for the future.
Only minutes before the accident, Julie and her mother had enjoyed one of their customary daily telephone conversations. Her mother recalls their last conversation. “Julie was so bubbly. At a store near the campus, she had seen an outfit she wanted to wear on a special date, and I told her to go ahead and buy it. She didn’t take her car because she would lose her parking place on campus. Instead, she jumped on her bike to go buy the new outfit. The accident happened just a short distance from the sorority house where she lived.” My thoughts cried out to Julie - You cannot die, Julie! You’re every professor’s dream - and every parent’s. You have so much to offer. So much to live for.
Nurses silently came and went from Julie’s room. Her parents stood nearby in quiet desperation. Then the physician entered the room, cleared his throat, and said to Julie’s parents and two brothers, “Your Julie has only a few hours to live.” He felt the freedom to ask, “Would you consider donating some of Julie’s organs?”
At that same hour in a neighboring state, Mary leaned forward, struggling to see better in her small, cluttered living room. Her eyes followed every movement of her lively two-year-old. This devoted mother was storing up memories to savor when she could no longer see her child. Mary was going blind.
Several states away, John had almost finished six hours on the dialysis machine. This young father was reading to his two sons while his immobilized body was connected to a “artificial kidney.” Doctors had given him a grim prognosis of only weeks to live. His only hope was a kidney transplant.
At the same time in the Lincoln, Nebraska, hospital, Julie’s grief-stricken parents pondered the finality of the physician’s question. Their pretty brunette, brown-eyed daughter had once said she wanted to be an organ donor in the event of her death. The two parents looked at each other briefly, the anguish in their hearts reflected in their eyes. Then they turned to the physician and responded, “Yes. Julie always gave to others while she was alive. She would want to give in death.”
Within twenty-four hours, Mary was notified that she would receive Julie’s eyes, and John was told to start preparing for a kidney transplant. Julie’s other organs would give life to other waiting recipients.
“Julie died right after her twentieth birthday - twenty-four years ago. She left us with very happy memories,” says Julie’s mother, now in her seventies. “Nothing -absolutely nothing - could possibly be as heartbreaking as the death of your child,” she emphasizes, “for your heart breaks again and again. At each birthday. At each holiday. At each milestone: when she would’ve graduated; when she might’ve married; when she might’ve been having children.” Taking a slow and deliberate breath, Julie’s mother says, “But Julie’s life was a gift to us. Knowing that in her death, she gave the gift of life and sight to others is comforting to us, and remembering that we carried out her wishes has helped us cope with her death more than anything else.”
Her voice softening, Julie’s mother says, “You and Julie’s other friends and teachers were an important part of her life. Your teaching influenced her life tremendously, and you remind us that our love for Julie and Julie’s love for others are alive today.”
As one of Julie’s professors, I hold the thought that I may have had a small part in teaching Julie how to live. But she - and her family - are still teaching me an even greater lesson: How to die.
- Barbara Russell Chesser