A Life Everlasting

by Sarah Gray

  I was especially moved by a poem that was written and delivered by Dr. James Selby Jr., a heart and two-time kidney recipient. It was a poem called “You,” and it was dedicated to his organ donor. It began with the words:

  I remember when I first found out,

  that my organs were coming from you.

  A sense of happiness filled my heart,

  however there was a feeling of sadness too.

  For me to live,

  you had to die.

  While my family rejoiced,

  your family cried.

  I thought about the researchers who received Thomas’s organs.

  Just as so many people are touched by the gift of an organ for transplant, I figured someone out there must have been touched by Thomas’s donation for research. Who received the package with Thomas’s liver? Did they wonder about him or his family? Is it weird to open a package that contains the eyes of a fellow member of the human race? How many packages do they open per year, or per day? Was there a crowd of eye researchers rejoicing with its arrival? Or was it stored on a shelf, collecting dust?

  Although the counseling had been helpful, it wasn’t the only thing I needed. I was looking for some kind of peace. I thought that perhaps I should try a psychic; I don’t believe in them, but I was curious, and wanted something or someone to give me perspective on my loss.

  My sister-in-law Julia went to a psychic called Kizzy, in Glasgow, in 2012. Julia reported in an email that Kizzy had told her that Thomas was “at peace and with his own people and was looking after his wee bro,” that Thomas “had to go to let Callum live and he knew from the beginning that he didn’t have long. . . . He waited to meet the family and make sure Callum was OK and he was at peace when he died with all his family around him.”

  On the second anniversary of the twins’ birth, I sent an update to the twins’ medical team, with a photo of Callum and a précis of what the psychic had said. Phil Brooks wrote back:

  In your last email you had mentioned what a psychic had said . . . and I had a similar experience but have hesitated to share it with you. Maybe a phone chat would be better.

  By total coincidence, Phil—a spiritually open-minded person—occasionally speaks to a psychic named Claudia Coronado in Sedona, Arizona, to “get clarity on issues.” It just so happened, he told me, that in a meeting with her in September 2009, when I was pregnant, she told him that “there were two souls waiting to enter the world that I [i.e., Phil] would be deeply involved with. She indicated they were looking forward to meeting me, but there was one who was going to need me especially.” Phil had no idea what she was referring to, not even when he met us at the twins’ birth.

  I was so grateful for the care I had received from the hospital staff, including my doctors, some nurses, and the chaplain, that I wrote a letter to the hospital CEO, and recognized each person for his or her contribution. As a result, these hospital employees were selected to receive an Inova Service Legends Award.

  When Callum was six months old, we attended the awards ceremony. Phil asked if he could hold Callum, who had been fussing. As soon as Phil picked him up, Callum looked into his eyes and put his head on Phil’s shoulder. He didn’t do that with anyone else. Phil said to him, “Do you remember me?” Callum lifted his head up and looked into Phil’s eyes again, then put his head back down on his shoulder. Phil thought, I believe that some part of him knows me. And it was then that he remembered his conversation with Claudia the psychic, though it would take him some time to tell us about it.

  On the second anniversary of Thomas’s death, in March 2012, I called Claudia Coronado for a reading of my own. When I asked Claudia what she charged, she said she didn’t because she couldn’t guarantee that she’d be able to contact the right people.

  “Thomas has appeared to you before, right?” Claudia said. I told her he hadn’t.

  “He’s a golden light,” she said, as though I had answered in the affirmative. “He will appear to his brother. If his brother says he’s talked to him, believe him.”

  I nodded into the phone and let her continue.

  “Thomas’s role now is like a teacher; he helps people who have just come to the other side. He welcomes them and makes them feel comfortable and makes sure that they know that everything is okay there.”

  Even though it sounded like a bunch of baloney, I still found it comforting to picture him in this role. I guess I wanted it to be true.

  “He will also make sure that your family is okay financially.”

  The lottery ticket I wrote to him about?

  “You’ll be having another baby, a girl. And I see the girl bringing a boy with her.”

  Claudia asked me if there was anyone else I might like to learn about.

  I told her my stepfather had died just a few months earlier.

  “I see him. He’s saying, ‘But . . . but . . . but . . . that’s it?’ He is struggling to accept his fate.”

  She said that Thomas was there to calm people like my stepfather who were unsettled by their own death.

  “Your mother will get married again to a nice man.”

  (Three years later, she would do so, but when Claudia made this prediction, my mother hadn’t even met him.)

  Whether any of it was true or not, the way Claudia described Thomas made me imagine him as a mature adult with a job. Even more, it made me think he was in the right place, especially when his time on earth hadn’t seemed to suit him at all.

  During a visit to see Ross’s family in March 2013, I decided to go see the psychic Kizzy for myself. I had been warned that she was so popular people lined up to see her and that the doors opened at 8 A.M., so I made sure to arrive by 7 A.M. so I would be first in line. Her “office” was on the top floor of a dilapidated shopping center called the Savoy Centre, on Argyle Street in Glasgow.

  At 7 A.M. the metal grate was still down on the shop door, so I stood outside reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. I was enthralled by the story of this woman whose cancerous cells had led to so many remarkable advancements in medical science, albeit without her or her family’s consent or knowledge.

  Every few minutes, more people—mostly young and middle-aged women—collected in the line behind me.

  “Here to see Kizzy?” we asked one another.

  By 8 A.M. there were about twenty people in line behind me, and Kizzy’s “handler” appeared. He counted from one to fifteen, and told the people from sixteen on to come back another day because she would not have time to see them before 4 P.M., when she saw her last customer.

  He told the people from number ten to fifteen that she might not be able to see them, either, because “she can take twenty minutes, or she can take an hour. It’s whatever she’s feeling.”They all agreed to wait.

  “We drove down from Aberdeen to see her,” I heard someone say. Aberdeen is a three-hour drive from Glasgow on a good day.

  Four people showed the handler their “jump the line” cards, which they were given because they had previously waited an entire day and had not been able to see Kizzy before she closed. These four were let in ahead of me.

  When the mall opened, the metal grate rolled up and we were led to her office. The mall was dark, seedy, outdated. One shop sold tacky nightclub wear along with light bulbs, First Communion dresses, and sympathy cards. Another seemed to provide an unlocking service for stolen cell phones. I was hungry for coffee and a bagel or toast, but before I could get something, the handler told me it was my turn.

  Kizzy didn’t look like the stereotypical psychic, with the earrings and crystal ball. She had graying black hair and was wearing the sensible clothing of a normal sixty-something-year-old woman. She looked like my mom, and when she spoke she had a slight Eastern European accent.

  As soon as I sat down and introduced myself, Kizzy touched my wrist and said, “I just got a warm feeling shooting up my arm. I am feeling a presence.”

  She went on to tell me that the presence was T
homas.

  “I see you at your job; you wear a name badge.”

  I did, but so did lots of people.

  “Your grandfather was in the war.”

  Wasn’t everybody’s grandfather in one war or another?

  Then she said, “I see you at a book signing.”

  A lot of people had told me to write a book. This was starting to freak me out.

  The book thing gave me a weird sensation; it was too much. I felt dizzy. Even though it was not yet 10 A.M., it made me want to get a stiff drink—or go on a trip, far away from my regular routine.

  I was also afraid. Did I believe her? Am I the kind of person who believes psychics now? I was scared to believe her. But if I didn’t believe her, why had I just waited three hours in line and paid her? What was I even doing here?

  I didn’t believe everything she said, but I have spent forty pounds sterling in worse ways.

  When I returned home, I was different. It was time to do something.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  An Accidental Quest Begins—Schepens Eye Research Institute

  July 31, 2012

  In late July 2012, I was scheduled to take a business trip to Boston, and I invited my mom to join me with the intention of squeezing in a couple of fun dinners and maybe some sightseeing in between my work obligations.

  In the week leading up to the trip, I did some research about Schepens Eye Research Institute, which I discovered was less than two miles from the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center, where I’d be working during the day.

  The institute was founded in 1950 as the Retina Foundation by Charles L. Schepens, who would become known as the father of modern retinal surgery. Schepens, a Belgian national who fled his country when it was overrun by the Germans in 1940, spent much of the war working with the French and Belgian resistance, and was arrested by the Gestapo more than once. He eventually found his way to London, where he began working as a retinal surgeon. After the war, he emigrated to the United States and took a position at the ophthalmology lab at Harvard Medical School. Just two years later, he founded the world’s first medical practice for treating diseases and conditions of the retina, at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Over the course of his long and accomplished career, Dr. Schepens developed numerous ophthalmic instruments and pioneered many surgical procedures, all of which, when combined, are credited with more than doubling the success rate of retinal reattachment surgery from 40 percent to 90 percent.

  Today’s Schepens Eye Research Institute—it joined forces with Massachusetts Eye and Ear in 2011 and is an affiliate of Harvard Medical School—is one of the leading eye-research institutions in the country. Its mission is to find new ways to treat and cure eye disorders. Since its inception, its work has expanded to include such cutting-edge innovations as gene therapy, stem-cell research, nerve regeneration, and tissue engineering—all in hopes of finding cures and treatments for the leading causes of blindness and vision impairment.

  I combed the Schepens website to see if I could figure out which scientist or study might have received Thomas’s donation. I hoped that I could make a connection with someone who could give me a tour while I was in town. I found email addresses for a couple of scientists there, and sent them each a message explaining who I was and asking to arrange a visit.

  A volunteer patient liaison wrote back to me to say that because of privacy restrictions, he would not be able to tell me how, or even if, my son’s donation was used. He made no mention of my request for a tour. So I set out for Boston with no visit to Schepens planned. I hoped I might hear from one of the people I’d emailed before I arrived, but no such luck.

  A few days into my trip, I decided to give it one last shot, and a Google search produced the phone number of the Schepens front desk. For a second I was shocked to realize the place had a front desk. If I was willing to make one of the weirdest calls of my life, maybe something would happen.

  I paced the skywalk of the Hynes Convention Center as I imagined how the call might go. I would explain the whole story and they would tell me it violated some confidentiality thing. Or that it wasn’t allowed. Or it wasn’t within policy. But I thought, I have a personal connection to this place. I gave them something they needed. I’m sure they have wondered, at some point, where the donations came from. I’m just going to call. I will feel awkward. Maybe they’ll feel awkward, too. If I could just get past the part of talking about the death of a child to a complete stranger over the phone, something powerful might happen. I have to at least try.

  My heart raced as I clicked “Dial,” and I gripped the phone hard.

  Here goes. I am doing this.

  “Schepens Eye Research Institute. How can I help you?” a woman’s voice said.

  Adrenaline shot through me. I tried to play it cool: Shucks, I’m just a regular old girl next door looking for her deceased child’s cornea researcher. Just like everybody else.

  “Hi, my name is Sarah Gray. I have a kind of unusual request, but maybe you can point me in the right direction.” I could feel my face get hot. “I had an infant son who died of a birth defect a few years ago. And we donated his eyes to Schepens.” My heart was thumping hard now. “I live in Washington, DC, but I am here in Boston on business for the next few days, and I was wondering if I could get, like, a ten-minute tour while I am in town—just so I can learn more about what Schepens does.”

  There was a long pause, and then the woman changed everything. She said, “I’ve never had a request like this, but I will find someone to help you. Please stay on the line, okay? It might take a while, but I’ll find someone.”

  I was expecting to hang up in tears, but my hopes soared. Was this actually going to work?

  After a while, I was put through to Carolyn Bellefeuille in the development department.

  “I’m so sorry to hear about your son. Twins, was it?” She had a New England accent.

  “Yes. His brother is fine, a very healthy little boy.”

  “My daughter just had twins. They were born premature—thirty-three and a half weeks—but now they’re fine. How old is your boy?”

  “He’s two.”

  “So this is a big facility, and there is a lot to see. Do you know which part you are interested in seeing? Retina? Cornea?”

  The letter I’d received from WRTC had mentioned Thomas’s eyes, but nothing more specific. “Wherever you think my son’s eyes would have gone,” I said. “Do you have a place for pediatric eyes?”

  “No, but we have areas for cornea research and retina research. I’m sorry to ask this, but it might help if you can tell me how he died.”

  “Technically, his heart stopped, but he had anencephaly. Part of his brain was missing.”

  “In that case, he probably donated corneas, not retinas. I can show you the area where they do the cornea research.”

  It was refreshing to talk to a stranger about Thomas in a new context rather than through the lens of grief. Carolyn and I were talking about Thomas’s eye donation, a topic about as uncomfortable and unusual as you can get, but it didn’t feel that way. There was no pity in her voice. She agreed to meet my mom and me at noon the next day.

  Something inside me started to shift.

  When we pulled up in front of the unassuming red brick building in West Boston the next day, I saw the Schepens logo by the door, and my heart jumped. I started making a mental list of the photos I wanted to take to share with Ross and Callum.

  I noticed a FedEx delivery truck near the loading dock, and I wondered if it was delivering eye tissue to the scientists. I wondered if Thomas’s donation had come in through this loading dock, too.

  Once inside, I was in awe. I felt like I was in Santa’s workshop. I read the names of the financial benefactors on the wall and felt like one of them, even though my name wasn’t listed. This place was now part of my permanent family history. As I looked around the lobby, Thomas stopped being just a memory. He had an address in the real world. I could take
a taxi to an actual place where he was. There were secretaries working there and microwaving Lean Cuisines for lunch. This place had a website and brochures; in fact, I took one about eye care and stuffed it into my purse, just to prove that this was not a dream.

  “So nice to meet you,” Carolyn said when she came to greet us, reaching for my hand to shake it. She was an older woman with dark black hair and kind green eyes. “We have never had a donor’s family here before.”

  And so began the tour. Carolyn walked us through several labs, where we saw people in their twenties and thirties hunched over microscopes. She explained that most of the research was done with animals on the lower level, but we were not allowed to go down there because of the sterile environment. We saw refrigerators and freezers and microwaves with “No Food” signs taped on them, and another handwritten sign that read something like “Please do not mix mammalian cells.”

  Eventually we reached the desk of a man eating a salad from Whole Foods. It was Dr. James Zieske, a senior scientist at Schepens and an associate professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. He had grayish brown hair, round cheeks, large wire-frame glasses, and a friendly smile. I would learn later that Dr. Zieske had been studying the mechanisms involved in repairing wounds to the cornea for thirty years and had published more than seventy peer-reviewed articles on the subject. Incredibly, he was also the man who ordered the human eyes for research. In other words, he was one of the people I had been wondering about for the last two years.