MY DY:ING HUSBAND BECAME AN ORGAN DONOR AS HIS FINAL WISH

"Grace," the letter continued. "You know I wanted to donate my organs. What I didn't tell you is what I found out three weeks ago, and what I asked the doctors to do about it.

There's a little girl in this hospital. She's four years old. Her heart is failing, and she's been on the transplant list a long time, and she's running out of time faster than a heart is coming. Her name is Lily. I've never met her — I only know about her because I asked my doctor, in those private conversations, whether my heart could go to a child if a child needed it. And there was a child. There was Lily.

I asked them to direct my heart to her. Specifically to her. A directed donation, they call it. And they were able to arrange it, because my heart is a match for a four-year-old girl who is going to die without one.