I Love My Donor

As people are falling, they open their eyes wide and use both hands to catch themselves. I don't. I hike and snowshoe in steep hilly rocky terrain. When I stumble, I close my eyes tight, put my left hand over my left eye and use only the right hand to catch my fall. I am like a pregnant woman who instinctively protects her belly first. I will do almost anything to protect the corneal tissue I received from my donor.

The sparkle in my left eye is more than that, it is the sparkle of a great Jewel of Kindness. It is more precious than just eyesight. It is the remaining living tissue of my donor. It is his cosmic life force. The decision to donate the cornea is a manifestation of pure unconditional kindness.

In the month before my transplant, I repeatedly had a dream/vision - sometimes as I slept, sometimes as I meditated. In the dream, I was in a desolate gray concentration camp, standing before a twenty foot high wooden fence. As I stood there looking at it, without knowing how, why, or by whom, I knew that someone on the other side was going to toss a precious jewel, a huge red ruby into the air so that it landed on my side. They would toss it into the air without knowing who might catch it or find it, without knowing how it would be used.

It would be my new cornea. I would catch the jewel in my eye. At first I was disturbed with the image of this hard shiny object landing in my eye. And the dream would end.

Then a few days before the transplant, I changed in the dream. Instead of tense and afraid, my arms and heart opened wide, my face softened to receive the jewel.

When it pierced my eye, it turned blindingly white and clear. It was as bright and radiant as all the diamonds and stars of the universe. It was one great mass of all the stars that ever were. With the impact, the stars, the millions upon millions of points of light, radiated from my eye and throughout my body until I was a field of stars with the shape and outline of my human body. And slowly stars began to drift away from me into the world around me and into the universe. His life force would mingle with all that is the cosmos. A small concentration of his star light would remain with me.

I carry this concentration in my eye. With or without vision, I want to sustain it, honor it, and continue to carry it. It is more than eyesight. It is even more than the freedom and independence that eyesight gives me. It is pure unconditional kindness. It is a manifestation of our sacred human goodness.