Carla’s New Beginning

“The End” – what does it actually mean anyway?  It could be the end of your favourite TV programme, an outcome or result or, indeed, sadly the end of someone’s life …

But what if that didn’t need to be the end?  What if that was just the start?  A new life – a new beginning for someone else? 

When your life is coming to an end all sort of thoughts enter your mind.  My focus was on those I’d be leaving behind; it took me to some very dark places.  I would torture myself with the agonising possibility of my children growing up without their mum, my parents without their daughter, my sisters without their sibling, and so it went on.

I didn’t worry about me at all.  I wasn’t scared of the actual passing away; I’d been so close to it before that I knew it wasn’t anything to be afraid of.  It was all about the others and how they would cope.

However, there was one selfish thought that went through my mind and that was that I didn’t have a partner/husband/ boyfriend to care for me and to be there by my side right to the end.  Up until then I hadn’t found my “Mr Right” (if he existed), my life partner, my soul mate – and that caused me some self-pity. 

Someone’s life came to an end in December 2014.  It wasn’t mine, but it could just as easily have been.  Instead, I was on the urgent list in hospital with end-stage heart failure; I was 38 years old.  Because of organ donation I was offered the new heart I so desperately needed.  It saved and transformed my life. 

I am now in the second year of my new life and so much has changed for the better.  A new heart has brought with it so many wonderful things, but falling in love has to be the best yet.  I now have a wonderful extended family and the longed for “happy ending” – and yet, with my new heart, I feel like this is just “The Beginning” …