Most of us don’t plan for death, but we should.

Why?

Because learning and life itself can come from it.

Are you someone who would like to further science by making an anatomical gift of your body?  

Yes? Then don’t assume telling your family of your wishes is enough.

If you want, for example, to donate your body to Albany Medical College, you have to complete a declaration of consent — no lawyer is needed but it must be signed by two witnesses. You will then be registered in the Anatomical Gift Program and receive a donor participant card for your records.

You should tell your family because, at the time of death, if a close family member objects, the college will respect their wishes.

The cremated remains are returned to the family after students have finished learning from the cadaver.

Michael Smith, who directs the college’s anatomical gift program, said at a memorial service in August at Albany Rural Cemetery honoring the donors, that they had “lives that, even in passing, continued to teach, guide, and give.”

He also told the families of the donors who had gathered for the occasion, “Your loved ones are our students’ first teachers,” teaching “the deep humanity of medicine, empathy, and how to become compassionate practitioners.”

Sidney Mittiga, one of the medical students who spoke at the ceremony, said, “The experience of meeting this selfless donor is hard to put into words. I felt immense gratitude that not only extended to the donor but to their family that likely played a role in their decision to enter into the Anatomical Gift Program.”

She went on, “That day, I set an intention to be 100-percent prepared and present for every lab, extract as much knowledge as I could from our donors, and to let the gratitude I felt be my North Star.”

The sincerity of gratitude at that ceremony was palpable. But forethought was needed for those donations to become a reality.

So, too, with organ and tissue donation.

We still recall vividly a story we wrote in 1999, over a quarter of a century ago, about a gift of life that bridged cultures and taught us a lot.

Asako Mazawa was a vibrant young Japanese woman, studying history at Framingham State College in Massachusetts. She wrote in 1996, “I have studied cultural differences and arrived at the conclusion that the history of a country constitutes the essential basis of its culture. I would like to deepen and broaden my knowledge in the study of cross-cultural relations between Japan and the U.S.A.”

In June 1997, she was riding on a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle with the father of her host family when he swung around a blind curve and the motorcycle crossed the center line and hit an oncoming car.

She hung on to a tenuous thread of life as her parents and younger sister flew from Japan to Boston to be with her only to learn she was brain dead.

Asako had stipulated on her Massachusetts driver’s license that she wanted to be an organ donor. Her family crossed a great cultural divide and honored their daughter’s wishes.

Five Americans lived because of her death. One of them, Doris Kalohn, wrote to thank the Mazawa family, forming a lifelong connection.

Kalohn was on the United Network for Organ Sharing list and had been steadily moving up the list as her liver failure worsened. There are currently over 100,000 people on the UNOS list, which was set up so organs would be distributed fairly based on medical need. Only about a third of those 100,000 or more are likely to receive organs this year.

“You don’t move up the list unless you get more serious,” Kalohn told us. She was a practical woman, a local nurse and the mother of three sons. “You just slowly keep getting worse.”

Her suitcase was already packed when the call came that a liver was available. The transplant surgery gave her another 23 years of life. She died on April 29, 2020.

“The extra years of vibrant life were truly a gift,” her family wrote in her obituary.

The people who received Asako’s heart and lungs and kidneys never reached out to the Mazawa family. Kalohn told us she thought she understood why.

“It’s mortality,” she said. “People in our culture don’t deal with death and dying … It’s nothing you discuss.”

Kalohn went on to say that she was always taken aback when she heard people say, “If something happens to me ….”

She continued, “I always want to say when something happens.”

We can all learn from this clear-eyed approach. Each of us will die although it is uncertain when.

If we want to use our lifeless bodies to benefit others, now is the time to act.

Many more people in the United States need organs than there are donors. We’ve written before on this page about policies of presumed consent, which many European countries use, in which citizens have to opt out of organ donation, resulting in many more donations.

In countries like Austria or Spain, with opt-out policies, more than 90 percent donate organs whereas in the United States, where citizens have to opt in, only about 15 percent do.

Not a single state in our nation has a presumed-consent policy while about 13 people die each day waiting for a transplant, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. The American Transplant Foundation puts that number at 18 people dying each day for want of an organ.

In New York state alone, there are currently almost 8,500 people who need a lifesaving organ transplant.

Any New Yorker who is at least 16 — no one is too old — can join the New York State Donate Life Registry, recording consent to be a donor.

This means you can donate organs — heart, kidneys, pancreas, lungs, liver, and intestines — and tissues including corneas, skin, bone, ligament, blood vessels, nerve, cartilage, and connective tissues.

Right now, in New York state, 7,135 people are waiting for a kidney; 555 for a liver, 346 for a heart, 134 for a pancreas, 86 for a lung, and 14 for an intestine.

You can specify what you want to donate and for what purpose — transplant or research.

The state has set up several ways to enroll. You can enroll when you apply for a learner’s permit or driver’s license, when registering to vote, or through the New York State of Health Official Health Plan Marketplace when applying for health insurance.

If you decide to donate, as with the anatomical gift program, it is important to talk to your family.

Asako’s younger sister, Hiroko, remembered, as her sister was dying, how she had talked about her commitment to organ donation.

Asaka’s father went on to write a book about her and the family constantly repeated this message to Kalohn: “Your thankful heart heals us always.”

So the gift of organ donation can work both ways, not just saving the life of the recipient but also healing the bereft family.