The Resolution

The Resolution

Christopher Kolker MD

Doesn’t he get it?

This forty-something-year-old guy is joking and laughing in his hospital bed, surrounded by anonymous bodies in white coats.  They are the ones who ought to go on without a care in the world.

Doesn’t he know he’s dying?

And what’s worse is that he did it to himself. Jake gave a kidney to a stranger just a couple of years ago and now has the audacity to smile as doctors lament over his own kidney failure – the kind that having two kidneys would have prevented.  And still, he doesn’t seem to have regret- his face is almost jolly, and his body language is relaxed and at ease, cutting through the room's tension that the team of doctors and students had created.

And Jake remained that way during his hospitalization.  How was that possible? As a mere medical student in that white coat posse, I would dare not ask him- it might trigger an emotional cascade, breaking through the denial that he surely must have clung to, I was told. 

My attending physician told me that it must be beyond horror to be Jake.  My gut said something else.

As we approach the new year, I have but one resolution – I want to be more like Jake.  Even though he has long since departed, I suspect what I saw was not a Freudian defense mechanism, but faith.  Jake gave freely and completely of his very essence – even to the point of sacrifice.  He left no regrets, but joy in giving.

That’s the kind of person I want to be, too.

So this year, I resolve to:

Give generously

Giver personally

Give frequently

Give sacrificially

Give completely

In other words, I want to give like Christ gave.  He gave entirely of Himself, enduring torture, death, and the grave, so that untold others may live.

Maybe this year, I will finally get it right.