Christmas 2014

It’s been a banner year for The Reluctant Donor. A fourth printing – and the opportunities to tell the world about my mother and her siblings – has been very humbling, exciting, and special. The love they gave me is the greatest of all gifts.

So much is happening and has happened in the treatment of kidney disease, that I know they would be astounded. Back to my grandmother’s days when she began kidney failure in the 1940’s, progress has been made. Told there was nothing more the doctors could do for my grandmother and her failing kidneys, to the invention of a dialysis machine, , to transplanting organs from one person to another, to paired exchange organ transplants, to new ways of dialyzing without having to sit still, and to possibly building and creating new kidneys in a lab.

Sadly, if you are suffering and in pain today, that is not enough. Because kidney disease still has a long way to go. If The Reluctant Donor can somehow bring peace and hope and joy and laughter to someone suffering today through the courageous stories of those who went before them, I will feel as though I am helping a bit.

The spark of life that we all carry within us as we live and breathe is divine.

It’s such a mystery, this life we live. The magic of it, the power of it, the beauty and the pain and sorrow of it; I don’t pretend to know the why of it. But, I believe it is the greatest gift. What we do with this gift of life is up to each of us.

I took life for granted in my younger years. It has been the greatest and best gift I’ve ever received despite pain and sadness. As I grow older and as I celebrate another Christmas with all the mysteries, wonder and fascination of the story of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, I marvel. A baby was born. Life!