I don’t think about it very often. But when I do, I have a feeling that a passage in my life came towards me. The silent wait the night before the surgical operation was filled with peace. It was simply what life had in store for me. My father had polycystic kidneys and had been on dialysis for ten years. It shaped our roots and our family history. It has also shaped my sisters’ bodies. It was in my heart to donate a kidney when my older sister needed a transplant. But it was not necessary for her. It was her husband who stepped into the picture of this prolongation of life. A few years later, my younger sister needed to be transplanted. And in her case, her husband’s generosity was not enough. It’s not enough to just want it. It involves possibility. For those who want to donate an organ, that possibility is linked to being in perfect health. Hence the gift.
In this story, a simple and ‘ordinary’ story, there is a circularity of gifts.
In all the different steps that this journey has required, I have met others who, like me, have walked this path. In a simple way. For their wife, for their son, for their husband… And the extraordinary thing is that even in cases where a direct donation is not possible due to incompatibility, a so-called “cross-over” kidney donation is always possible, a way of transforming all available gifts into life and allowing someone else to live fully. This cross-over of life happened to me too. I was unable to give my sister a kidney, so we registered on the cross-over list. She received her transplant just over a year ago. It was not, as we had expected, from a living donor, but from a young person whose death the family wanted to translate into life for someone else. My sister was one of them. A few months later, during the days when we were accompanying my mother in her encounter with God, I received a phone call informing us that a compatible person was waiting for a transplant. I could not put it into words, but here too I experienced the intertwining of life in Life.
The operation, the recovery, an ordinary journey that begins again. A gift. Although I don’t know the person who received my kidney, I know that it is a beautiful act of self-giving, a way of learning to surrender control, to allow life to flow in ways that are not meant for us to know.
What I do know is that, at least in the days before the transplant, everything went well for her too. And that gives me hope. I hope that this blessing, this possibility to do good, born of the mysterious intertwining of our lives, will continue to be manifested in her. It has certainly borne fruit in me.
It is as if I were experiencing a new freedom, a serious and joyful awareness of the gift of health, the certainty that goodness is at work in a mysterious way.
For me, and for all of us, the prayerful company of so many friends was vital during those passages. Indeed, it was a gift to feel in the flesh the strength of that presence, to feel the faith with which we were presented to the Lord of life, ready to accept what He was going to put in our hands.
When people tell me that I have done something great, I tell them it’s not true. I only responded to the call inscribed in my personal story. Each person, in their own life and from their own life, is called to bring their gifts forward in different ways. This was possible for me today. But everyone can make this happen in their own way, perhaps they already have. Self-giving is an ordinary possibility and a possibility for all. There are many things about this experience that I value and cherish, but there are two marks that I consider particularly precious. These are the marks that make up the scar it has left on my flesh. It keeps me from forgetting the wounds of too many men and women whose bodies bear the scars of violence in so many parts of the world. And then I give praise to God, the only source of every perfect gift, for the Good He inspires in the hearts of so many who become instruments of His love to make life flourish.
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