BEFORE MY 19-YEAR-OLD SON DIED, HE DONATED HIS HEART TO AN 18-YEAR-OLD GIRL

So I did something. I hope you’ll forgive me for arranging your life without asking.

Lily’s mother is named Diane, and she’s about to be exactly where you’re about to be, except in reverse — she’s about to have her only child saved by a boy she never met, and she’s going to spend the rest of her life grateful to a stranger and wishing she could thank his mother. And you’re about to lose your only child, and spend the rest of your life with a hole where he was.

You two need each other. I can see it so clearly I don’t know how you’ll miss it. Two mothers, each with one child, each alone, connected forever by a single heart.

And Lily, Mom. Lily is going to be walking around with my heart in her chest for the rest of her life — hopefully a long, long one, the one she never thought she’d get. My heart. Beating. In the world. After I’m gone.

You can put your hand on her chest, Mom, whenever you miss me, and feel me still here. I’ll still be here. Not the way either of us wanted, but here. My heart doesn’t stop just because the rest of me does. It just moves into someone who deserves it, someone I love, someone who can give you a reason to keep going when I can’t be your reason anymore.

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