A letter from the past.

My sister & my aunts were going through my Grandmother's office this weekend. My sister found this letter my Nana wrote the donor family from my Mom's liver transplant 3 months after my Mom passed away.

Warning - it's sad, but beautiful letter. Get the tissues.

Dear ones,

This a very difficult letter for me to write as i do not know to whom i am writing. And there are times such as these when a thank you cannot and is not sufficient. As a mother, for me to try to convey to someone that I do not know and will probably never be given the opportunity to thank personaly how deeply grateful my family and I are to you, so unselfishly gave the greatest of gifts your loved ones organ for transplant. The gift of a liver was the gift that could save my child's life and our gratitude is beyond words. Our family has thought of you so often, we have prayed for you and continue to hope that God's richest blessings will be yours. We know that your lives have been filled with pain and that there is any empty void that cannot be filled by the loss of the one you loved. We also know that you have to be a wonderful family, as in your darkest hours of grief you would think of someone else.


The gift of a liver transplant meant that our 45 year old daughter would have the opportunity for life, and to have a better quality of life. Unfortunatlty, for us God must have had a better plan, our daugher came through the 12 hours surgery, and even had to have a second minor surgery to repair a leaking bile duct two days later. After seven days she was moved from ICU to a room. That evening she was able to walk down the hall. The next morning they took her for what was to be a routine test, a chest x-ray and lab work, and although we did not know it, a liver biopsy. Later we where told that the reason for the biopsy was that this was the only way they could determine if her body was rejecting the transplant, and if so, they could change her anti-rejection drug. It was not. In a liver bioposy one patient in 1,000 would bleed, one in 10,000 would hemmorage. Our daugheter hemmoraged and suffered cardiac arrest. They where able to restart her heart after a period of time, and then do another necessary surgery. This left our daugher in a coma and fifteen days later we lost her without her ever regaining conciousness. She had suffered severe brain damage from the cardiac arrest.


I know that perhaps I should not have told you about our daugher's death, but I feel that you want to know as I am sure that everyday you wonder about who had the organs of your loved one, and how they where getting along. Our daugher was a wonderful, wonderful child, mischevious, a great sense of humor, and who loved life and her family. She was a single parent and left two daughers, 19 and 21. She had a very good job, and was very good at her job.


I just want you and all your family to know that you will always hold a very high and special place in our hearts. We know your pain and your sorrow. My husband and I will be married 51 years. We are the parents of three other children and have nine grandchildren. We lost our first grandchild in a car wreck when she was 16. Our daugher that we lost was our 2nd child, and just like you and your family, will never get over the loss, but we are learning to live with it, and we wish that life could have been different for you all and for us.


Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I can only hope that this letter reaches you someday, and if you should wish to correspond with us, i would be so happy to hear from you. Even if i never do, please know that in this this great big world, there is a family that will ever be in your debt. A debt that can never be repaid.


In grateful appreciation, DSK