The Green Awareness Ribbon

Just as the pink ribbon has come to symbolize breast cancer awareness and the red ribbon, HIV/AIDS awareness, the green ribbon has become an international symbol too, to mean sharing the gift of life through organ and tissue donation. And wearing it helps to create awareness about the urgent need for organ and tissue donors.

This was included in an article titled ‘The Circle of Life’ in our local newspaper almost three weeks ago. But what really caught my attention was a poignant poem entitled “To Remember Me” published alongside it that evoked much food for thought! It mentioned about how this author’s thoughtful essay written in 1976, published in The Cincinnati Post and reprinted in Reader’s Digest began an extraordinary awakening about organ and tissue donation worldwide and continues to inspire organ donors all over the world today through the Internet!

It stated that Robert Test died at the age of 69, in 1994 from lung disease complications and under the terms of his will, his body was donated to the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine's Department of Anatomy.

Here's sharing the essay -

TO REMEMBER ME
(by Robert Noel Test)

The day will come when my body will lie upon a white 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 deathbed. 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 a 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 pain.
Give my blood to the teen-ager 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 fiber and nerve in my body and 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, someday, a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her windows.

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 my 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.

You can also view Robert Noel Test’s essay at testfamilygenealogy.com

Hmm...organ donation?? Should I or shouldn't I? I'm still contemplating, as yet still undecided!