Through me, my donor lives on. And though I feel culpable for simply being alive, I have finally come to realise that striving to live well is the ultimate act of love
On New Year’s Day 1998 – the day after my 21st birthday – when I go on the list for a double lung transplant, I’m conscious of three certainties. The first is that without a transplant, I will die, and I will die soon. More than once, I’d felt the breath of my friends’ departures, the camber of their spirit winding down and the sad predictability of history repeating. Ever since I can remember, I’ve known that this is how my life would be – sitting with the dying, seeing out the living, watching over the dead.
The second certainty is that organ donation is the ultimate act of love. It’s peak altruism, kindness on the grandest scale; it’s all that is good about humanity.
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