Like Ordinary People

Tiny Pieces Of Us by Nicky Pellegrino is a beautiful contemporary novel that will lodge in your heart and soul.

The central theme of the novel is organ donation. This is a difficult theme, sensitively portrayed.

The reader sees lives affected by those who received donated organs and the one who made the decision to gift the organs. In pain and loss the gift of life is given to perfect strangers.

Pain and grief are constant companions. “She is lost in grief.” Grief never goes away. We have to learn to live with our pain. Grief brings conflicting emotions. “I cry… I get angry because he was taken too soon and it isn’t fair.” We have to live with the continual ‘what if’ and ‘why?’ A life snuffed out in its prime. All that potential lost.

Living with someone with a life limiting condition affects all those around – family and friends. There is the constant fear that your loved one could be lost at any moment. “All the wealth he had worked for, all the success and status; seemed irrelevant as he faced losing a child.” We cannot keep death at bay no matter how much money we have. Priorities change as we realise that the riches of this world lie in people.