Don't Stop Believin'

I glanced at the calendar sitting on my desk, marveling at how empty it seemed. Up until recently, it was marked and highlighted with bills due and credit cards to pay. We've been able to breath the past couple months. As I was working on some inane project in my office, I started trying to calculate how much we used to have to pay for this and for that.
And then I thought, "How on earth did we ever survive????"
We are resilient because we never really know how bad something is until we are looking back upon it. That goes for the good as well--but mostly, not knowing the big picture of how bad things are is the only possible way we make it through
We, as a family, are going through a bad time right now. What stings the most is our awareness of it; how could we not be aware, watching a disease progress as we helplessly stare at the phone, waiting for the news, for someone else's death to be our saving grace for life.
I have learned the limits of love these past few months, finding myself contemplating the death of one to save another, my father. How I might consider killing someone else to save his life. It's all morbid conjecture, I know, and if faced with the possibility I couldn't ever really take someone from their family. But the fact that, in my mind, I might...it's chilling to say the least.
Up until yesterday, I hadn't considered anything other than the phone ringing, the surgery a success, my father returning to us a new man. But yesterday, I began to question my optimism, my hope, wondering if I was just being naive, or unfeeling or in denial--but then I was reminded by my very smart friend that I am often the only bright light in the darkness of our situation, the other side of the coin to the pessimists (or realists, as they say) that make up my family and my guilt evaporated, just like that.
Because if I can't get him a liver myself, the least I can do is to believe one will come.