EDINA, Minn. — Just down the hallway, in Room 356, Curtis Kelly’s body lay covered to the chest by a white blanket, his torso rising and falling with the help of a ventilator. A neurologist at Fairview Southdale Hospital had declared him brain-dead nearly six hours earlier.

Mr. Kelly’s far-flung family — a son, three siblings, a sister-in-law, his girlfriend and the daughter of a former girlfriend — had gathered in a narrow conference room in the intensive care unit so that John P. LeMay could ask permission to recover his tissue and organs.

Checklist in hand, Mr. LeMay, a family support coordinator with LifeSource, the organ procurement organization in Minnesota, counted off the body parts that might restore the health of long-suffering patients. Because there was no record that Mr. Kelly, 46, had registered as a donor, he asked Mr. Kelly’s 18-year-old son, Kello Brown, to approve each request for these “anatomical gifts.”

They hoped to take the heart, the kidneys, the liver and lungs, Mr. LeMay explained softly, as well as the intestines, pancreas, blood vessels and skin. Bone might be removed from the pelvis and leg, he said, but undertakers could insert prosthetics to make the body look natural for a viewing at the funeral.