I’ve been thinking for some time about the need for unity in organ donation advocacy.  There are thousands of hard working, passionate folks who advocate for organ donation day in and day out.  There are hundreds (like me) whose lives have been touched by the need for transplant.  Those who need organs.  Those who have lost loved ones waiting.  Those who have donated organs.  Donor families who have lost loved ones too.  There are millions of messages out there.  New pleas, posts, tweets, blogs, campaigns, ads every day.

Today I just want to begin to illustrate the point.  In the future I will write some ideas about what can be done to create a national sense of urgency.

To Remember Me – a poem by Robert Noel Test (1926-1994)

This poem is a moving to tribute to how might all want to be remembered and how we can create a living legacy even in death.  It was posted by Ursula Reeg in the Donate Life LinkedIn group I wrote about last week.  It made me start thinking about how many may be aware of this poem.  So I started googling.  This poem is posted on hundreds of pages.  Some funeral home pages. Some organ donor awareness pages.  Law student papers.  Concurrent Resolutions in State Legislatures.  Blogs.  State Departments of Health.  A site that gives students a way to “cheat” on persuasive speech topics.  Even today, as I was developing this post, fellow transplant advocate @Davestransplant tweeted about the poem.

Ironically, I could not find anything about the life of Robert Noel Test himself.

The poem is truly beautiful.  But for as much as it has been published, I wonder how successful we are in encouraging organ donors through it.