Oh my

Very powerful.

sigh.

I write from the vantage point of a hospital chaplain of eight years, who worked on a kidney transplant ward for two years, and as a father of a kidney transplant patient.

The transplant folks deal mostly with the living and their families. It is a ward where hope for life giving/extending organ donation lives. However, that hope is not always fulfilled.

I would like to offer a different perspective to the following comment made by the doctor:

Love allows us to wish so hard for something to come true, that we can be OK praying for another child to die, so that ours will live.

It is a difficult position to be in—knowing, that for your loved one’s life giving transplant to take place, someone must first die.

Over the years, one of our daughters has received two such transplants. From whom, we do not know—only that they were ages 10 and 6. We were not allowed to know nor communicate with the parents. We asked the transplant nurse to convey our deepest thanks to the families involved. In 1987, a year after the first transplant, I was allowed to write an anonymous letter. I wrote in part:

There is no way upon this earth that we would have ever asked anyone to make such a sacrifice. We could only hope that in the midst of their
own sorrow someone would be able to see that organ donation would help someone else. And in the midst of your sorrow you did that.

It is impossible for us to thank you enough for being able to see that vision of helping others while experiencing your own grief. We can only
say that we do. Although we do not know you, we frequently ask God to help you, to comfort you, to heal your sorrow and to bless you
generously.