A new family in my parish, the oldest daughter in which is gravely disabled physically and mentally, went home after Vespers Saturday night and later found this gravely disabled pubescent daughter unresponsive in her room.

She eventually was airlifted to Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis, where she has been declared brain dead (by an Orthodox Christian neurologist, coincidentally).

The prayers for the departure of the soul from the body have been served. And now the real heartbreak - from my perspective.

Her grieving parents are keeping a sort of vigil over tubes and machines and the body of their daughter while transplant donor paperwork is completed and a recipient is found.

The agony of the scene in the preceding sentence has never before occurred to me. It has always been “they decided to donate her organs,” without appreciation of what that means emotionally for the family.

It looks as if the handmaiden of God, Annalise, will be the first person interred in our parish cemetery. I’ll be singing my first funeral in years in this young parish.