It’s not easy to be grateful. Life is hard. It can be cruel.
The world is a depressing place: wars, famine, disasters both natural and manmade. Here in the richest nation on earth, in the most affluent region in one of the wealthiest states, there is an astonishing amount of poverty. Many people work two or more jobs just to survive, with no savings or job security or health insurance. The future seems uncertain for so many of us.
So, it’s a lot easier to be angry than grateful. And people have gotten rich building a business model that plugs into and supercharges that anger. The algorithms know. The stuff that pops up in your social media “feed” amplifies that anger. So, rage abounds.
Gratitude takes work. And it requires all of us to focus less on the material and more on the intangible. The love you have in your life. The people who are special to you. The beauty of the natural world. The blessing of good health. The value of generosity, optimism, humility, a sense of humor, an open heart and an open mind. The value of honesty and integrity.
On this Thanksgiving Day, I am focused on all of these “things,” these intangibles that give life true meaning. This year, our family expanded— first, by the marriage of our younger daughter to the love of her life and the merging of our family with their big, beautiful family. Then our older daughter gave birth to our first grandchild and Peter and I learned all about a whole new dimension of love.
Also this year, my husband Peter became gravely ill with a very rare zoonotic bacterial infection called tularemia. (A zoonotic disease is one that can be transmitted from animals to humans.) He nearly died.
I’m grateful for the urgent care doctor who reviewed Peter’s vitals, immediately recognized sepsis and called an ambulance to rush him to the hospital.
I’m grateful for doctors, nurses and all the other staff at Peconic Bay Medical Center who treated him through one harrowing night in the emergency department and in the days that followed. I’m grateful for the miraculous heavy-duty antibiotics that attacked the bacteria and saved Peter’s life, grateful for the ER doc with the expertise to get those meds flowing into his body as quickly as he did, grateful for the hospital’s chief of infectious disease who figured out what was going on, and grateful for the care he got after admission. Five days later, he was back home, feeling weak and tired, but grateful to be alive. And we were grateful to have him back.
I’m also grateful for the staff at Peconic Bay who are still fighting with Peter’s health insurance company, which decided it had no obligation to cover any part of the tab for the hospitalization because they deemed his admission to the hospital “not medically necessary.” It didn’t matter that he was on IV antibiotics for three days, according to Fidelis Care. No matter what the actual doctors treating him thought.
This is what a $1,200 monthly premium for an individual policy buys you, apparently: hassles when the insurer actually has to pay out. He was hospitalized in early July. It’s still not resolved. This is extremely common, I was told by a hospital employee. Our health care system sets the stage for a for-profit health insurance company battling with a nonprofit hospital and their patient over whether or not a 64-year-old man with a raging systemic bacterial infection was close enough to death to actually require hospitalization.
Uh-oh. I feel that rage seeping in now. Time to refocus on how grateful I am that Peter lived to see the birth of our beautiful granddaughter in August, and how she loves snuggling in his arms. I am grateful he is alive and well on this Thanksgiving Day.
Maintaining an “attitude of gratitude” does take work, but it’s worth it. I try to take a few minutes every morning while my coffee is brewing to refocus on what I’m grateful for in the moment. Sometimes I even write it down. It helps to be able to look back on those grateful moments when circumstances distance me from that attitude of gratitude, as they are bound to do.
Thank you for reading.
Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving with people you love and moments of gratitude every day –
Denise
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