The headline read, “Number of living organ donors on the decline.” I don’t know why it caught my eye. I’ve never been in the position where anyone I knew needed an organ. I don’t even know my blood type, so even if I were acquainted with someone in need, I wouldn’t be able to say straightaway if I were a match.

Nonetheless, the words grabbed my attention and gave rise to an inkling of guilt. Was I being too greedy with my organs? Should I be harvesting them for the greater good even though doing so might affect my basic bodily functions such as consuming alcohol and breathing?

I was certainly not in the position to feel guilty about having all of my inner workings intact. Still, my mind flashed to images of scores of dejected faces in an emergency ward eagerly awaiting the news of a suddenly rich inventory of lungs, kidneys, and livers. Was the situation so dire that for thousands of people across the land, waking up in an icy bathtub after a night of passion with a stranger and finding a homemade incision was a distinct possibility?

Not quite free of conscience, I read on further about the “widening gap between the number of organs available for transplant, and the number of patients who are awaiting a donor organ.” I thought that the least I could do to narrow that margin was to sign the organ donor portion on the back of my driver’s license, if I hadn’t already.  After all, in the event that I met my demise with most of my other organs in working order, why shouldn’t I release those vitals that were as good as appendages within a now lifeless capsule ripe for immediate decomposition to someone who would be all too thankful for the opportunity to use them? 

Feeling the impetus to do some good, I pulled out my wallet, smoothly sliding my identification adorned with a curly-haired, smirking twenty-six-year old on one side and a few lines and boxes for signatures and checks on the other. As I perused the contents of my pact with the medical arm of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles with a pen at the ready, it began to dawn on me that by signing this I was pre-supposing my own death. 

 I’m aware that we all gotta go sometime, but it had been some time since I pondered my own mortality and what it might mean. Thinking about where my organs were going to go after lent a heavy air of imminence to the situation. 

 Never much of a believer in the active afterlife, I began to imagine myself hanging out past the pearly gates sporting a pair of Ray Charles sunglasses that I had taken to wearing after my eyes had been harvested for science.  Me and the other organ donors would be standing across the street listening to the noise emanating from Cloud 9,the heavenly watering hole where those who hadn’t given up their livers were busy downing pints and catching eyefuls of the most beautiful women one could possibly cavort with in heaven or on Earth. I flashed back to the signing of the back of my organ donor card as the fateful moment of my eternal damnation; the death of my afterlife.

 I put down my pen and slowly slid my driver’s license back into my wallet. I felt better momentarily, but knew that pang of guilt would come back in a flash the next time I heard about someone in dire need of a transplant. I can only hope that death doesn’t precede my next attack of conscience. To think, all I have to do to potentially save someone else’s life after mine is extinguished is sign a simple piece of identification in my wallet.  I can hear a little angel who usually sits on my left shoulder calling out from beneath that velcro strip right now, “Sign it! Sign it!”  Sounds like good advice.