自考英語綜合一 上冊 lesson16
Text Remembering Tracy Bill
This year,my husband David and I celebrated the 22nd birthday
of a man we had never met.
His name was Tracy Bill Marsh,
a tall handsome young man who worked in a pizza shop.
Last summer,he was supposed to have been best man at his brother's wedding.
But on the night of December 8,1992,
Tracy got off work and stood in the pizza shop's parking lot talking to friends.
Tracy jumped up on the hood of a friend's car,
as they had done a hundred times before.
This time,though,Tracy lost his balance and fell.
His head struck the pavement,hard.
One of his friends rushed inside to call an ambulance,
then he phoned Tracy's father,Bill Marsh.
Bill raced to the hospital,where he was joined by Tracy's mother,Cory.
She knew from the way the doctors talked there was little hope.
Tracy had a broken skull--one doctor said he had never seen one so bad.
Standing next to her son,
Cory remembered that Tracy had once mentioned organ donation.
Maybe I can spare another family this sorrow,she thought.
When the time came,
she and Bill signed the forms permitting his organs to be taken out.
Tracy Bill Marsh died the next day.
Twenty-four hours later,in a Boston hospital,
Tracy's liver was transplanted into my husband,David,
who was suffering from an incurable liver disease.
Months after his operation,
David and I sent our unknown donor family
letters in care of the New England Organ Bank.
As information about donors was kept secret,
we could not know where and to whom to send our thanks.
But the donor's parents wished to meet someone
who had gained life through the gift of their son's organs,
so the organ bank agreed--for the first time
--to bring together two families linked by the most bittersweet relationshiop.
We were to meet Bill and Cory Marsh in a hotel room
about halfway between our homes.
David and I arived an hour before the meeting.
I placed fresh flowers,drinks,cheese and crackers on a table.
When the door opened,my heart stopped.
We saw a middle-aged couple.
For a few seconds,we stood staring at one another.
Then Cory and I hugged.Bill held out his hand to shake David's.
His grip was electric,and David could feel that he didn't want to let go.
Bill's first words to David were"Are you okay?"
I hugged Bill and saw tears behind his glasses.
"That's it for the tears,"he said,smiling.But it wasn't.
We talk for 3 hour and a half.
The marshes showed us a picture of Tracy Bill.
We learned for the first time how he had died
--and something of how he had lived.
He was a generous,good hearted young man
who loved the outdoors and was never happier than when he was working under the hood of his car.
Evenings,Tracy and his friends would set up floodlights in the garage,
and Bill and Cory would go to sleep listening to the boy's laughter
as they repaired cars.
Carved on Tracy's gravestone is a car rolling down a mountain road.
We learned something about Bill and Cory,too.
Cory can't bring herself to throw out Tracy's best-loved pair of blue jeans,
and she avoids the supermarket aisles that carry his favorite foods.
Every morning,as she gets in her car for work,
she says good morning to Tracy.
Bill and Tracy shared a love of stock-car racing.
I said that David,while recovering from his operation,
had renewed an old interest in stock-car racing.
I mentioned that recently David got this crazy idea of taking a course somewhere down south
where he could learn to drive a stock-car.
Bill said instantly,"Tracy Bill would have loved that."
When it was time to leave,we felt awkward.
Enough had been disclosed about our lives to stay in touch.
Now David and I know where to send our prayers.
For the Marshes,seeing David and knowing he was well seemed to ease their suffering.
I'll never forget seeing the tall David bending over Cory,
her arms stretched around his wait as a mother would hug a son.
For a long time they held each other tight.
It was hard to know if she was saying hello or goodbye.
Maybe she was saying both.
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