An essay by Robert T. Test

The day will come when my body will lie upon a sheet, neatly tucked under four corners of a mattress located in a hospital, busily occupied with the living and the dying.

At a certain moment a doctor will determine that my brain has ceased to function and that, for all intents and purposes, my life has stopped.

When that happens, do not attempt to instill artificial life into my body by the use of a machine. And don’t call this my death-bed. Let it be called the Bed of Life and let my body be taken from it to help others lead fuller lives.

Give my sight to the man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby’s face or love in the eyes of a woman.
 
Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain.

Give my blood to the teenager who was pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play.

Give my kidneys to one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week.

Take my bones, every muscle, every fibre and nerve in my body to find a way to make a crippled child walk.

Explore every corner of my brain.
 
Take my cells, if necessary, and let them grow, so that some day,
a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her window.

Burn what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow.

If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses and all prejudice against my fellow man.

Give my sins to the devil. Give my soul to God.

If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you.

If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.

A few days prior to Ben’s heart transplant, a friend of the family sent Lana a wonderful letter and poem. With her permission, I am sharing them with you. First, here is the letter:

March 18, 2007
Dear Ben Grier and Family,

Hi! My name is Laura Harvey, and I grew up with Susan and Kip Massey!

Recently, Susan, Kip, and l have been reunited. Some of my friends and I from Birmingham met Susan and Kip at the Cracker Barrel in Prattville a short while ago, and we were delighted to see each other.

Through emailing, Susan revealed that her cousin’s son was having heart problems and might need a heart transplant. As such, I made a prayer request for him at church, and I have been thinking of him and Susan, as she has had some health issues lately also.

Right now, I live in Vestavia Hills with my parents, and I attend UAB as an undergraduate student who is almost finished with her degree in English, specifically Professional Writing and Public Discourse. However, I think that my passion lies in creative writing, and in reaching out to others.

Susan Blake Massey sent me the link to the web site for Ben Grier. I surfed the
site for a little while, and then decided that the best thing I could do to help Ben would be to pray for him and his family, and I also felt that I could write him a poem.

I do hope that you like the poem which I have written for Ben. I based it on the pictures of Ben, and on what I viewed on the web site.

Please let me know if you need any more copies of the poem, or if there is anything further that I can do for you and your family.

Keeping you in my prayers,
Love always,

Laura Harvey

In order to preserve the formatting and presentation of the poem, I scanned it from the original and saved it as a PDF file.

Please take a moment to read “You Are Special and You Are Sweet!”

If you wish to contact Laura, please let me know.