Last weekend, I performed at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Arizona for an annual transplant reunion banquet. Each year, patients, doctors, organ donors, and their families gather to celebrate the gift of life together. It was a special performance for me, because a little over five years ago, I had a life-saving kidney transplant at this same hospital.
But there is more to the story. In fact, my history with Mayo Clinic goes way back to when I was just a kid. In the multi-story atrium lobby of the hospital is a grand piano, and I used to volunteer to play music there while people passing by would stop to listen and patients listened from their hospital beds in rooms far above. Mayo believed that music could be a part of the healing process, and I often wondered if in some small way my music was helping others through their difficult circumstances. In all the time I played that piano, I never dreamed that one day I would be the one in the hospital bed, listening to that piano while I recovered. And I never dreamed that one day I would be the guest performer at a transplant reunion banquet, talking about how my life had come full circle.
.