C. James Graham, 32°, KCCH
5315 Timber Creek Circle
North Little Rock, Arkansas 72116–6493
jamesgraham@comcast.net

When his mother undergoes a life-saving organ transplant, the author of this article personally realizes a lesson taught in the Entered Apprentice and Eighteenth Degrees.

During each winter holiday season, I am especially aware of a lesson from our Masonic Degrees where we are taught that life is like a mosaic pavement, filled with tiles of white and black. We learn that the ground floor of King Solomon’s temple was covered with white and black tiles in an alternating pattern and that this checkered pavement is symbolic of our lives. What an appropriate analogy to our lives—filled with days of goodness, love, joy, and peace, but at times agonized with darkness, despair, disappointment, and pain. We just don’t know what tomorrow will hold for any of us. We pass from those times of goodness into times of darkness and back.

In my life, one particular event stands vividly as a demonstration of these times of light and darkness. About a month after my father died of cancer, my mother began feeling ill. She told me that she didn’t have any energy, was having trouble sleeping, and was getting short of breath. I encouraged her to see her family doctor, and later, after several tests, we learned that she had a rare form of hepatitis, probably from a blood transfusion several years before, and her liver was badly scarred.

Over the next several months, Mom became progressively more ill. Soon, she couldn’t drive. Then, she couldn’t even walk around her house without assistance. Over a period of about ten months, she was hospitalized 15 times. Finally, her doctor told us that she would need a liver transplant. There is not a liver transplant center in Arkansas, so we were sent to Dallas, Texas, to Baylor University Medical Center where she was evaluated and placed on the transplant list. Mom had become desperately ill, so the possibility of a transplant gave us great hope. But there aren’t enough organs for transplantation, and many potential recipients die while waiting for an organ. About one in four persons on transplant lists in this country die waiting for the life-saving transplant.

A few weeks later, Mom had to go back into the local hospital for treatment of another complication. This time, however, she didn’t respond well. After three weeks in our local hospital, she was transferred to Dallas in a final effort to save her life. The transplant surgeon told us the next morning that he feared she would die very soon. Still, he hoped the transplant could be done in time. That night, I went back to the hotel room where I was staying across the street from the hospital. I had held up pretty well throughout this entire long ordeal, but that night, at that time, in that hotel room, it was a time of great darkness. I paced the room for what seemed hours and finally ended up on my knees, praying. After I finished my prayers, I went to bed to try to sleep. Just after I turned out the bedside lamp, the phone rang. It was the nurse taking care of my mom. He said the words I had prayed for, “We have a liver for your mom.” The next morning, she had the transplant operation. One week later, she was discharged from the hospital, and about two weeks later, she went with me to the grocery store for the first time in several months. She made a wonderful recovery.

Although she died a few years later of other causes, the time she was given by her transplant was treasured by her and all who knew her. Light had flooded back into our lives by the anonymous charitable gift of her organ donor!

Since that time, I never watched the Entered Apprentice Degree or the 18th Degree of the Scottish Rite without thinking about this experience of light and darkness in my life. In the Degrees of the Chapter of Rose Croix, we are reminded of the light and darkness of life, of the love of God, and of those great constellations: faith, hope, and charity. Mother’s illness was a time of seemingly impenetrable darkness, but with faith in a loving God, the hope of medical technology, and the wonderful charity of an organ donor, we received light beyond measure. The word charity is derived from the Latin word caritas, also meaning affection or love. In Mom’s case, it was the gift of an organ transplant—the charity and love of an anonymous organ donor and his or her family—which gave her a second chance at life. It was a priceless gift that I will never forget, and the best holiday gift I have ever received.

Truly, our lives are often checkered pavements, filled with areas of light and darkness. During each year’s winter holiday season, a time near when my mother had her transplant operation and, later, passed on, I reflect on this message and take heart knowing that a God of love created this universe and will sustain us as we move with faith, hope, and charity across the new year’s checkered pavement of life.