Kennedy’s charm bracelet, affixed with a heart-shaped pendant bearing the date 7/19/2011, was a gift from Su this July. Su’s necklace, a silver kidney bean dangling from a chain, came from Kennedy.
During their years at Barrington (R.I.) High School, Kennedy barely knew Su - making more remarkable her act of generosity two months ago: the donation of a kidney that would transform her former classmate’s life.
The story behind their reconnecting after nearly a quarter-century, and of the life-changing impact that has had on Kennedy, Su, and their families, contains plot twists worthy of a novelist’s imagination.
There is the social media angle, for one, a pair of former classmates friending each other on Facebook, then discovering they had more to swap than fading yearbook memories. Then, too, there’s the motivation driving someone like Kennedy, who has two young children at home, to help someone like Su, whose debilitating, but generally not fatal, medical condition caused Kennedy to wonder: What if I were in her shoes?
There are the coincidental birthdays - they were both born June 6, 1968 - and blood types, coupled with Su’s failure to find a suitable donor after many false starts. Also, Kennedy’s stepmother-in-law, a nursing professor, is associated with Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, one of a small handful of New England transplant centers, where the surgery took place.
There’s even the shared belief that “something higher was working here,’’ as Su put it emotionally two weekends ago, the first time the two had seen one another since occupying adjoining operating rooms.
“Just the fact that Liz even offered to do this blew me away,’’ said Su, who lives in Mount Vernon, N.Y., with her husband and 10-year-old daughter. “To give because you want to give unconditionally, not knowing the other person so well - that’s pretty amazing.’’
Their back stories are pretty amazing, too.
