Boxing Day

I'm not doing well on the "taking a blogging break" thing, but I keep finding things I want to announce to the world. A month ago today an Internet friend of mine got "the call." There are a lot of situations in which there is a "the call." This friend was not a Canadian pilot, so it wasn't a place in a groundschool at Air Canada. It was even better than that. Those of you who read the tags before the post already know how much better. "The call" came in as he was hooked up to a dialysis machine, telling him that a matching donor kidney was available.

He received the transplant, and although they say that the donor organ has not entirely woken up yet, he is feeling better than he has in a long time. I've never met him in person. He lives on a continent where I've never been. But the person who decided to sign that donor card and the family that okayed it make me so happy that I'd better stop typing this post or I'm going to cry and wreck my make-up, and I'm just going out to a party.

So to everyone who ever took the trouble to indicate according to their local regulations that they were willing to donate organs after death, you not only do it for the recipient and to ease the minds of your family who might otherwise be asked to donate the organs not knowing your wishes, but you also do it for everyone who knows that recipient, even a little bit.

Thanks.

Oh, I called this post Boxing Day, not just because it will still be December 26th in Canada when this posts, but also because in my family the origin of the term "Boxing Day" was said to be the tradition of boxing up the things you no longer need, and giving them away to someone who can use them, just what happens to donor organs.