Mucho Paz

Editor’s Note: Last month The Spokesman-Review featured a story about Ruben Pena, a 12-year-old boy whose brain quit working after a he suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Ruben’s mom, Rachel, made the painful yet heroic decision to donate her son’s healthy organs to sick people who needed them, including one Spokane woman whose life was saved thanks to Ruben’s liver. Today’s poem was submitted by a sixth-grader at St. Thomas More School whose teacher asked him to write about Ruben’s story.

Mucho Paz

The bullet flew straight and true,

coming to rest in Ruben’s head,

just before a boy was playing

now the 12-year-old lay dead.

A priest prays, a mother cries

the doctors work, he is too young to die.

It was the mother’s toughest choice,

a brain-dead boy who lives,

to lay her son to final rest,

or take his organs to give.

Family gathers, a mother sighs

it’s time to say her last good-byes.

Do you want to donate Ruben’s heart?

His mother nodded yes.

His lungs, his liver, and his kidneys?

“Yes, I think that’s best.”

A priest prays, a mother cries,

Upward to heaven young Ruben flies.

Someone gets his kidney,

A man from Fresno receives his heart.

A dying lady has his liver,

Three people get a brand new start.

So many worked, so many tried.

Tears of joy and sadness dried.

A 15-year-old with a .22

carelessly having some fun.

Shooting and killing young Ruben Pena,

ending a life that had barely begun.

Mucho Paz, a mother cries,

A hero, who was too young to die.

xxxx