August 22, 2025, 11:55 pm - Val's Story, Chap 19

“Was it a drunk driving accident?” was the first question I asked the two officers standing in my yard. With Val’s years of drinking and the two OWIs she’d gotten in the past, a tiny part of my brain had expected the police to show up one night with that news.

          “We can’t tell you what happened, but we know it wasn’t a car accident,” the uniformed man answered.

          “Did she drink herself to death?” That was always the second possibility I thought of, especially after spending that week with her in Africa, where the amount of alcohol she drank daily would have killed most people.

          “I don’t know, but here is the number for the officer who is working on her case.” He handed me a slip of paper, one that had been ripped from one of those small spiral notebooks cops always write in on TV shows.

          “Okay.” What else could I say at that moment?

          “If there’s anything we can do for you, please call our department.” I think he gave me his business card, but I don’t remember seeing it after that. I only remember that slip of paper with that phone number on it.

 ~~~

 “Unfortunately, it looks like she killed herself,” was what the officer on the phone told me once I told him who I was, who my daughter was. Probably not exactly what he said, but it was the last thing I expected.

          Jim and I had crawled into our queen-size bed with the cat and the dog after the county deputies left the house that Friday night. With trembling hands and waves of nausea, I had called the number on the slip of paper.

          “How?” I asked next.

          “She shot herself with a small-caliber handgun.” Again, I can’t recall how he phrased it, but that’s what I heard, that’s what my beautiful, crazy, alcoholic daughter had done.

          He gave me the number to the coroner’s office so I could get more details.        

          Dr. Katie took my call and was the sweetest stranger I talked to during the ensuing three-month ordeal of finalizing her death certificate. I asked her for every detail, telling her I worked in the medical field, I knew anatomy, and had seen blood and guts. I can’t share the specifics that she told us.

She did ask if Val was an organ donor. I looked over at my husband, my cell phone on speaker. He shrugged and nodded at the same time.

          “I’m sure she was. That’s the kind of person she was.”

          “Good. Then I’ll ask that team to call you. As you probably know from working in the medical field, they can only harvest a few of her organs at this point, but they still use her skin, bones, and all kinds of tissue.” Yes, Dr. Katie told me what those tissues were, and I have the list in the big envelope that the place sent me. “I’ll have them call you yet tonight if that’s okay.”

          It was after one a.m. by then. “We’re not going anywhere, and we won’t be going back to sleep.”

          Nearly an hour later, the organ and tissue procurement office called. He asked all the questions that are asked before a routine blood donation, and many, many more. I was on the phone with him until three a.m. He said that everything they harvested from Val’s body could affect the lives of up to one hundred people. And that they would do it with the utmost compassion.

          I believed him, but I also believed that as precious as my daughter’s body was, it was now only her body, a shell. Her spirit and soul had moved on. And as much as I wanted to believe that she had moved on to heaven, my heart ached for confirmation. And for peace.