One unseasonably lovely November afternoon, my husband, Richard and I drove over the mountains to Denver. We left on time for once, the weather and traffic cooperated, and we arrived in the Metro Area before rush hour got crazy.
I should have known things were going too smoothly.
We had planned to bring dinner to my parents, who live near the city. But when we arrived at their senior community, we learned that my mom been taken to a nearby hospital, with my dad accompanying her.
We drove straight there, and found my mother in a room off the busy ER, looking tiny under a mound of blankets and attached to a plethora of tubes and wires and monitors. She was sitting up though, and devouring her hospital dinner.
Turns out that the sore throat she had reported when I called the previous weekend had been the beginnings of pneumonia. Hence the antibiotics dripping into her veins from one bag and the saline solution from another, plus oxygen chuffing into her nose, and electrodes attached to her chest to monitor her heartbeat.
Now that she was stable, she was slated to be transferred to a regular room. So we drove my dad back to their apartment and fed him dinner.
By that time, Richard and I had almost forgotten why we ventured the long drive to Denver in the first place–almost. Our destination was another hospital, where Richard was scheduled to meet with Oncology to learn what’s next in the journey that began with him hallucinating birds more than two months ago and continues through treatment for brain cancer.
By the time we left the city the next afternoon, headed back home over the mountains, my mother had improved so much that she hoped to be discharged from the hospital the next day. And we had conferred with Richard’s oncologist, who explained that his tumor, a Grade 3 Astrocytoma for those who track these things, is serious enough that they want to treat it aggressively.
That means radiation to start, accompanied by chemotherapy to enhance the cell-killing effect, and then a course of chemo by itself.
And that’s where Thanksgiving comes in: Our two-hospital trip reminded me of why I give thanks. Not just on Thanksgiving, or just for the turkey, no matter how delicious it and the trimmings might be.
No, what I give thanks for on this holiday and every day is not stuff–nor the chance to stuff myself with food, nor money, power, or prestige.
My giving-thanks list is short, comprised of the essentials that I believe are worth more than any things or money: Sharing my days with Richard, my mother’s recovery, being part of a far-flung-in-distance but close-in-heart community of family and friends, the gift of practicing our art and writing, and of being able to live in a generous and sustainable way in a place we love.
Those blessings are what make every day Thanksgiving for me.
Copyright 2009 Susan J. Tweit.
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