Gratitudinal
Dec 5th, 2012 by Kimberly
Every year on the fourth Thursday of November, America celebrates its history. Well, the good parts. The Pilgrims survived the winter. At least, some of them. About half of them made it through the coldest part of the year in a new land. A place where other people already lived – people who hadn’t invited them over – but those people sucked it up and helped the squatters make it in the New World. (Which would be the old world for the people that were there first.)
I’ve probably mixed in two or three different stories there, but you get the gist. And I’m sure we’ve continued the tradition just as well down into modern times, sneaking into other countries and squatting in other people’s homes, then throwing parties and inviting the locals over for food we don’t know how to cook. Happy holidays!
I kid (mostly). I actually really like Thanksgiving, the holiday without a cartoon spokesperson. I spent the holidays jetting about, by air and by Honda, to see family. (You know family – that institution that can be made up of blood relatives or dear friends or, if you’re extremely fortunate, a blurring of both. I’m lucky that way.) Two happy weeks flew by in my barrage of visits. By the time I rolled into my own parking lot on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I couldn’t wait to spend some quality time in my own living room, just me and my cat. I’ve done a lot of traveling this year. (Well, by my standards. I know people who are airline commuters and those who spend at least one weekend out of town every month. Just now, I pity them.)
Had the toilet not picked that weekend to clog up, life would have been perfect.
Facing my misbehaving appliance, I couldn’t help but think, “Really, God? This couldn’t have waited twenty-four hours?” An abundance of preparation and a corresponding lack of sleep had gone into that period of travel. The traffic wasn’t as bad as it could possibly have been, but there was still a fair amount of it. I would be returning to work the next day, where people would expect me to form coherent sentences all day long. Was a couple of quiet hours at home too much to ask?
Having dealt with the toilet, and deciding that the leaking sink (yes, there was that too) could make do with a bucket for now, I sat down at last. In the mood for a good sulk, I decided to check my email. Hey, it was bound to have multitudinous requests for my time and money. As long as I was already feeling put upon, why not indulge?
In retrospect, if I wanted to feel sorry for myself, I should have stuck with the bills and avoided a new post from Keiki Kai. The webpage describes the journey of Kai, a two-year-old little boy dealing an inoperable brain tumor. Every couple of days, Kai’s mother would add a new note about his life, and lately things had not been good. Kai was in the hospital, and his mother had been told to make her peace with the inevitable. Kai wasn’t coming home. Once he had been admitted, the doctors told the family that it wouldn’t be long before he passed away. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t, but three weeks can be a mighty long time when you’re having to live it day to day.
Three weeks this mother spent, watching her son and holding him, trying to enjoy every minute she had. When I started reading her posts, I prayed for a miracle. By the third week of their stay, I wondered if living with that little pain-ravaged body might not be more punishment than the worst person alive could deserve, let alone an innocent two-year-old who’d never done anything to anyone.
This woman quite literally watched her son die, noting every day that he slept more and interacted with them less, his body slowly shutting down.
And I was upset about a dysfunctional toilet.
Sometimes I forget how many blessings there are in my life, laying about the landscape of my existence like so many leaves from the November trees. I traveled a lot because I have so many people in my life who love me, and just now, I have the resources to visit them. I have a sink that leaks because it has spent a lot of years transporting water that I don’t have to fetch. I have a cat who was a little irritated with me because she loves me and thinks I’ve spent too much time away from her lately. And I have a toilet that was restored to working order with a minimum of disgusting yucky grossness.
I don’t know why suffering like Kai’s has to exist in this world. Someday, God and I are going to have a long talk about it. I don’t know that it will always be someone else’s pain. Some day it might be mine. But the grief that this mother shared reminds me to keep perspective, and to keep my eyes open to beauty and gratitude.
As you turn your attention to the holidays, ponder this: before the holiday where we give and receive, there is a day put aside just to remind us of how much we already have. Consider the idea that that might not be an accident.
I believe with all my heart that Kai is now surrounded by all the Love that there is, and that he will never want for anything. His family, on the other hand, needs your prayers until they get to see him again.
Say a prayer, think a good thought, send light to the universe – whatever you want to call it is okay with me. Then, go find someone you’re grateful for and hug them with all your might.
Kimberly is going to hug her cat. Zoe may not like it, but she’ll tolerate it, at least for a while.
Sending my hugs to you. Thanks for the perspective.
Oh, Kim. This one killed me on a lot of levels.