In September, when I read about the death of poet/author/singer Jim Carroll, my body stayed at my computer which displayed the story but my mind handled an immediate hairpin curve that slung me back to the mid-1980s, to the living room of my apartment, where my then-husband, Billy, and I and two of our best friends, Shelby and Kim (also a couple), were hanging out.

Our friends had brought over an album they wanted us to hear. I cranked the Pioneer way up, the speakers thumped with Carroll's punk urgency, and that's where, how and with whom I first heard his catchy, and harrowing, “People Who Died.”

. . . Those are people who died, died . . . They were all my friends, and they died . . .

I didn't connect the dots between that song and the people in the room until a few days ago, when some recent news and end-of-the-year reflection switched on the light bulb for me:

Shelby died of cancer in his early 40s, a theft of time that still seems cruel and unreal.

Billy has come out on the other side of cancer, and we're so happy he will be with us this Christmas; his radiation treatments in another state prevented our holiday reunion last year.

And Kim's life was saved this year by an organ transplant; her family and friends already know what they got for Christmas.

I was the other person in the living room that long-ago evening, and — in addition to realizing I need to take better care of myself — there's a lesson I want to impress on us all in this season of gift-giving.

It's the lesson that knowing Kim, and following her struggles through written and photographic updates e-mailed by her loved ones, impressed on me this year.

Kim is my friend and she didn't die — because someone she didn't know signed up to be an organ donor, and that person (and Kim's medical team) literally saved her life.

Each of us has that life-saving capability inside us. All we have to do to give that same gift of life is sign up to be the someone for someone else. All of us should be able to feel great comfort in knowing as our life ends with brain death, we are able to help other people with what we don't need anymore, and that our organs and tissues have the potential to spare pain and suffering, and that we can indeed leave the world a better place.