Today, the first of spring, is the day in March when we advance the transplant milestone marker one more year. It will have been nineteen years ago tonight when E said good bye to the heart he was born with.

I blame him for being too nice. He just plain wore out his first heart in half the time most of the rest of us do. We heard this week of a third patient who had to have a second heart transplant as, and I quote “they don’t last that long.” Frankly, I’m encouraging him to try to be a bit more miserable. You know, try to make this heart last longer than his first.

I suggested to him last night that for the next two days he should do what ever he wants. No chores required. Heart transplant anniversaries are fairly rare milestones and well worth taking the time to enjoy. He wants to spend it chopping stuff up with the chain saw. Good for him. To each his own. I put champagne in the fridge and intend on breaking my wine drought with some well deserved alcohol. Diet be damned, maybe some chocolate too…

For the first time in nineteen years I didn’t go to St. Paul’s with him for his annual check up. I stayed on the island and one of our sons went with him. Our eldest was thirteen when E had his heart transplant. Now he is an adult, a father himself, keeping his Dad company through his rounds of annual testing at the transplant clinic.. I can not stress to you how unlikely I would have ever imagined such a day. Honestly, in my wildest dreams I had hoped E would live long enough to get the kids raised and out of high school. A task I seriously doubted I could have done without him.

Yet here we are thirty-seven years married, three successfully raised kids. Nineteen of our years together are post heart transplant or as we now like to think of it, seven since moving to the island.

Which brings us to organ donation.. Imagine the power to give life. You have it. Sign your donor card. Encourage your friends and family to sign theirs.

We wrote a thank you letter to our donor family on the one year anniversary of the transplant and I think maybe we will write again on the 20th anniversary.. Twenty!! Good grief I cannot believe we are almost there… Those of you reading who went through 1999/2000 with us, probably are as incredulous as we are. Those who we have just met probably find it hard to believe E was ever “that sick”, but his heart had hours left. The pathologist told me, maybe 48 hours. How do you say thank you to someone for giving your husband life. It isn’t easy, but I practice the words every night in my head.

Living on this island, with the attitude he carries with him every day, there is no stopping E. He is likely to out

live us all.