Love in advance | LISB
A heartfelt story of love, hope, and community amidst a heart transplant journey, plus new event and membership perks.
NB: Lots going on today, but I didn’t want to leave anything out - please note the upcoming event and the new membership perk. - HH
Hey y’all,
It was nine years ago - August 12, 2015 - that our lives changed forever.
My wife was born with a congenital heart disease that runs in her family. It killed her grandmother at age 27, and her mother at age 45. And earlier that year, the doctors had told us that if she did not get a transplant, it was going to kill her in less than 5 years.
So after lots of poking and prodding - physical, financial and psychological - she was put on the list for a heart, and we waited for someone to die who had committed to be an organ donor.
We have friends who waited for years for a transplant, and other friends who died while waiting. But within a matter of weeks we got a call, and while it was not a good fit, it gave us hope, and so, in August, when we got the call “for real for real”, we were ready. Or so we thought.
The next 24 hours were a blur. The rush hour traffic to Duke Hospital. Waiting to learn if it was a solid match. Our friend Brian dropping everything to drive three hours to sit with us. Calls to family members across the country. Her rolling back to surgery just before midnight on the 11th. Me trying to sleep on the hard concrete floor of the surgical waiting room.
And then being called back into a “consulting room” at 6:15am to be told by an impossibly young surgeon that she had come through fine - textbook, really, he said - and that we had every reason to hope for a great recovery. I came out of the room, told the people who had waited with me, and then went to the restroom, where, under the yellow fluorescent lights, I sobbed.
For the next ten days we lived at Duke Hospital in Durham. The first three days of that she was in a medically induced coma, and so I had many long hours to sit and think. Then people began to visit and others sent emails and texts and the gift cards and small gifts of cash they sent kept us afloat and neighbors cleaned our house and fed our cats and the whole thing was this glorious expression of the love of community that still, to this day nine years later, gives me chills.
In the room next to the one where I am writing this, my wife is currently asleep, some four years past the latest date we could have hoped for her to be alive had some stranger - who dreamed such dreams as to extend their love for humanity to last even beyond their lifetime - not decided to be an organ donor.
The best day of my life was less than 24 hours after the worst day for the family of the man whose heart beats now in my sleeping wife’s chest. I pray that the gift he gave us gives his family comfort, to know that his love for the world gave us life, and in that way, he still lives on.
I almost did not write about this today. But the premise of this letter has always been about finding the beauty around you in the midst of a troubled world. And this is what I find beautiful today.
Five Beautiful Things
There is nothing so beautiful as watching someone teach something about which they are passionate. In this 16 minute video, 2005 World Beatbox Champion Butterscotch takes us through the 13 levels of beatboxing - a subject about which I knew virtually nothing, but found fascinating at the end. (via The Kid Should See This)
Public Work is a visual search engine that searches images in the public domain. I wish it was better at source attribution, but it’s super cool. Today’s graphic came from a search for “Butterfly”.
One of the TinyAward nominees this year is Alt Text Selfies. Think of it as self- written descriptions, instead of photos. And like photo selfies, the only limits are the imagination of the subject.
I love these animal portraits by Vincent LaGrange.
These macro photos of slime mold (!) remind us that everything has the potential for beauty, if seen the right way.
In case you missed it
The most opened link in the last issue (~12% of opens) was this expression of Black joy at the Olympics.
On my blog, I wrote about aging, and how I am running out of time.
As I mentioned in the email I sent Friday, I’m transitioning to a new email platform - Buttondown. I’ll write a long post about the decisions behind this soon, but the short version is that it will add more features for you and make it easier for me.
The key to make sure the email gods don’t kick this into the spam box is to interact with it: Open it, click links, forward it to people. If it ends up in your promotions tab, drag it to your Primary tab. Then Gmail will ask if you want to make that change permanent. (Yes, please!)
Upcoming Virtual Event
I don’t know if this is true for you, but in my travels and conversations, I hear a lot of uncertainty about the future. It all seems so… tenuous. Some friends and I are putting on a virtual workshop on Saturday the 25th of August at 1PM Eastern time around a way forward centered on community, hope, joy, and imagination. You can learn more about it here. I hope to see you there! (If you have questions, just hit reply to this email).
New Member Benefit
For several years now, the only real perk for being a part of the membership team that supports this project has been the knowledge that you are making sure I have the economic resources to do it. It’s like saying, “Hugh, ya weirdo, we need more of your stuff in the world”.
Beginning this Saturday, though, there will be a Saturday essay that will only be for members. The Monday letter is, and always will be, free. That will not change. But folks who have signed up to be members (Membership starts at only $5 a month) will get an additional, original essay in their inbox every Saturday morning, as well as any member updates, first notice of upcoming events, and so on. The topics of the essays will be variable, because I am human, not a robot, but will all be consistent with what you are used to.
If you are already a member you are good, and don’t have to do anything. You will get an email Saturday morning, and it will also update on the members only site. But if you are not, and my stuff resonates with you, and if, like me, you dream of a better world than the one we have right now, I hope you will consider becoming a member at any level - all levels get the same perks.
You can learn more about membership here
Thank You!
Whether you are a member or a casual subscriber, I’m grateful for you. Thanks so much for all the ways you support my work, from being a member to buying me a cup of coffee or just sharing this with your friends.
Y’all take care of yourselves, OK?
HH
Hugh L. Hollowell Jr
he/him
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