This is not our first donor rodeo.

Thirty-six years ago this very month, Eddie and I made the all-too-familiar trek to our fertility clinic for yet another attempt at insemination by anonymous sperm donation. Luck was in our favor this time, and nine months later we welcomed a handsome baby boy into our family. After having struggled with secondary infertility for years, we finally hit the jackpot thanks to a brown-eyed, guitar-playing, Jewish graduate student who lived somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard. Thank you, Donor #11, for sharing the gift of life and making our family complete. 

Sharing is one of the first skills we learn as kids.

Share your blocks! Share your markers! Share your ice cream!

In a study I saw in Psychology Today, kids as young as 19 months were already sharing their food. Scientists have explained human food sharing like this: by giving away food to strangers, we promote partnership and group cohesion, thereby helping our species continue to develop. In an early step of evolution, we became “obligate collaborative foragers"—meaning that individuals were interdependent and so had a direct and personal interest in others’ well-being.

Like, hey, we really do need each other! Of course, sharing food is just the beginning. We learn pretty quickly that being helpful makes us feel good. It gives us a sense of purpose and belonging. And experts say that performing acts of kindness puts us in a better mood, making us feel more hopeful and positive.

As we get older, we learn to share our umbrella, our popcorn, our knowledge. We share secrets, stories, a good laugh, a song. We share advice. Compliments. Books. A meal. We share our clothes. We share time. We share wisdom.

We share our bed. Our love. Our life.

When we share, our brains release Oxytocin. Oxytocin helps build trust, relieves stress and anxiety, improves immune function and increases our sense of overall wellbeing. When we have lots of Oxytocin in our bodies, we are more empathetic towards others, and that simply makes us feel happier. 

Eddie and I are getting ready to receive yet another gift of life. As he enters the hospital today to begin his bone marrow transplant journey, a 20-year-old woman, whose name we do not know and who is a perfect match to his human leukocyte antigen, is undergoing the final steps of becoming his donor. For five days, she’ll receive injections of filgrastim, which moves blood-forming cells from the bone marrow to the bloodstream. During the week it’s likely she’ll experience headaches or muscle and bone pain, as well as nausea, insomnia and fatigue. On Friday, she’ll spend most of her day sitting in a chair at her local medical clinic while these blood-forming cells are collected from her body in a way that is similar to donating plasma. The cells will then be rushed to OHSU, where Eddie will lie in his hospital bed, and over the course of about 45 minutes, receive her gift in a way that is similar to receiving a blood transfusion.

Now that’s what I call sharing.

We were lucky during our first encounter with an anonymous donor 36 years ago, and we’re hoping to get lucky once again. While we can’t express our gratitude to these two special humans in person, we continue to thank them under our breath each and every day.

I’m an organ donor, and I hope you’ve considered becoming one, too. It’s truly the final act of love and generosity... of sharing.We’re all in this together and, yes, we really do need one another.

Which brings me to John Prine and his song “Please Don’t Bury Me.” So, on a lighter note...

"Please Don't Bury Me"

Woke up this morning
Put on my slippers
Walked in the kitchen and died.
And oh what a feeling!
When my soul went through the ceiling
And on up into heaven I did ride.
When I got there they did say
John, it happened this way,
You slipped upon the floor
And hit your head.
And all the angels say
Just before you passed away
These were the very last words
That you said.

Please don't bury me
Down in the cold cold ground.
No, I'd druther have 'em cut me up
And pass me all around.
Throw my brain in a hurricane
And the blind can have my eyes.
And the deaf can take both of my ears
If they don't mind the size.

Give my stomach to Milwaukee
If they run out of beer.
Put my socks in a cedar box
Just get 'em out of here.
Venus de Milo can have my arms
Look out! I've got your nose.
Sell my heart to the Junkman
And give my love to Rose.

Give my feet to the footloose
Careless, fancy free.
Give my knees to the needy
Don't pull that stuff on me.
Hand me down my walking cane
It's a sin to tell a lie.
Send my mouth way down south
And kiss my ass goodbye!

And, finally, if you want to see a movie clip (it's only a few seconds long) of me as a little girl NOT sharing, here I am at my birthday party trying to wrench a newly opened gift from the hands of my BFF Weezy. I guess it took me a while to learn the sharing skill.