To gift or not to gift?

An appropriate question this time of year, as you go through your list of present giving.

What about when get married? Do you gift your bride or your grrom?

My new husband and I settled on paying off two weddings as the gifts we were giving each other.

It was only after I came across another newlywed couple a few weeks ago that I realized how powerful such a wedding gift can be.

Adam Abernathy and David Ferguson were like thousands of other engaged couples this year. Excited for the chance to tie the knot; worried about what could go wrong before their big day.

Forget the cake bakery going out of business or the customized napkins not showing up. Adam and David know the real meaning of, as we used to say in the local news business, “Something went terribly wrong.”

Sure, Adam knew he had been living with kidney disease for many years, but he sure wasn’t ready for doctors to tell him it was “game over.” Go on dialysis or think about getting a kidney transplant.

“Do you have a family member who would donate?” Doctors wanted to know.

The simple answer was, “No.”

“My parents weren’t a match,” he told me. “I have one half-sister, but she’s a young mom with two little boys. What if she needs to donate to them one day.”

The bigger answer was David.

“I spoke up and said, ‘Obviously, this is me. I want to be tested right now.’ ” David said. “We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. I want you to be healthy and comfortable.”

Wouldn’t you know it? David was a fantastic match, which would’ve made a sweet enough ending if the story ended right there.

Only it doesn’t.

Turns out, David is blood type O positive. That makes him a universal donor, meaning he could give his kidney to anyone. Those transplant surgeons looked at him like kids looking at a stash of presents on Christmas morning. Oh the things they could do with his kidney!

“We have to talk to the two of you about something,” they said as they introduced the idea of starting a “kidney transplant chain,” which starts with the wild idea, “If you’re willing to give your kidney to someone else …”

The doctors explained that they had another patient who was blood type AB negative, he’d been on the transplant wait list and very sick for a long time. He had a donor willing to give but who wasn’t a match.

“How can we not do this?” David and Adam figured. And so the gift giving began.

David’s kidney went to the 60-year-old man who had waited so long for good health.

Meanwhile, doctors found a young woman in North Carolina who was willing to give her kidney to the chain. She was originally scheduled to donate to a friend, but when that match fell through she was still willing to give.

Adam now has the kidney of a young black woman cleaning out his body. “I feel awesome,” he told me.

When it was all said and done, five people received new kidneys, all because one groom was willing to give the ultimate gift.

So hard to appropriately say “thank you” for something like that. Well, unless you have the opportunity to exchange wedding vows, something David and Adam did a few weeks ago.

“Without hesitation you gave your kidney,” Adam declared before all their family and friends. “And today I give you my heart.”