I hate the man who received my brother’s heart

Dear Delyara, My brother was an organ donor. His heart went to a man we later met through the transplant organization. The recipient is kind, grateful, alive because of something my brother wanted. I hate him. I know how monstrous that sounds. At our first meeting, he hugged my mother and cried. Mum placed her hand on his chest and said she could feel my brother. Everyone described it as beautiful. I felt sick. That heart had beaten beside me before I was born. I had heard it through a hospital monitor while my brother was dying. Now it keeps another man warm, another family intact. I should be grateful. Instead, when he posts photographs hiking or celebrating birthdays, something ugly in me thinks, Those years were not yours. Of course they are his now. My brother gave them. I love that my brother saved lives. I hate the living proof. I have never told my mother. She keeps the recipient’s Christmas cards beside my brother’s photograph. I cannot look at both at the same time.