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It came to him that easily, without bells or whistles or epiphanies Just a simple realization that he owed sorabbed a pen and yellow legal pad off the heavy iron coffee table He stared down at the thin blue lines and doodled a little heart in the corner

Before he even realized what he was going to do, he started to write

Dear donor family:

This is perhaps thethis letter to strangers who feel like faratitude, or if there are, it would be left to greater minds than mine to find them

I was in a coically killed Until recently, I couldn’t conceive of what that moment must have been like for you Then I lost rief was like nothing I’d known before—a wound that kept tearing itself open

How is it possible that in a time like that, your farief you looked to me and others likee and compassion of your act makes me believe in the world, and in my fellow ly, it has in to believe in myself

You have given ifts—the h I will probably never meet you, I want you to know that I carry a piece of you and your whole fa in iven me

May God bless you and your family

As he wrote the last sentence, Angel felt hiht, pure and hot and white, were flooding through his body, lighting places that had been cold and dark for years For the first time in his life, he knew—irrevocably and co

Madelaine reached into her closet for soertips brushed soft, orn flannel Very slowly she pushed the silks and cottons aside and caray flannel shirt that had been Francis’s

She re day that had started out cold and rainy and by noon turned almost summer-hot He’d thrown off the old flannel shirt and put on one of those oversized T-shirts that the drug co her

For atears, she reached out for the shirt and pulled it froht it to her nose and breathed deeply

She could s a dozen treasured ireen plaid box, laughing as he always did when he saw the aftershave OK thank God, I was almost out

She realized in a rush that he wouldn’t be here for Christ She and Lina would have to h those days alone Hoould they do it? Every one of their traditions had been forged as a threeso the Christhts, ould eat the Christood Spode china?

She clutched the shirt to her face and breathed in deeply, as if she could soh the sheer force of her will