Learning to be Thankful...

Thanksgiving is a favorite time of year for me.  I find the older I get, the more I grow into a real dedication to the notion of gratitude for whatever life sends you.  It wasn't always that way.  As a young boy, Thanksgiving always meant the doorway to Christmas.  A time when you watched for those happy talismen of the blessed gift-getting season: first snows, first Christmas commercials (the Norelco-riding Santa or the Coca-Cola Carolers) and the arrival of Santa Claus at the Hudson's Thanksgiving Day parade.

And as a teenager that appreciation grew into a fondness for the special meals.  Always soooo good.  The grown ups, my dad in particular, would make quite a show of saying how "thankful" he was for everything. I always thought it a little weird to be thankful for things like "health" and "a house" and "food on the table."  To me it was a time to be thankful for big feasts with no realization that others weren't so lucky; a few days off from school, and, back in the days before global warming and Al Gore messing things up, a chance to break out the sleds and tackle the golf course across the street.

As a college man it meant a break from classes.  A time to set down the rigors of an academic year and indulge in some horrible football, courtesy of the rotten Lions (the more things change, the more they stay the same, right?).  When I finished school and went to work for CMU as a residence hall director, quite frankly I found myself at Thanksgiving glad to get rid of the kids for a long weekend.  Thanksgiving on a college campus is often the first break after Labor Day - about 14 weeks into the time from which the dorms are first inhabited.  It was a grind and by the time the holiday rolled around there was almost always some really bizarre nonsense going on directly attributable to the close quarters living environment and the length of time of classes in session without a break.

I think that it wasn't really until I moved on from that job, and we started our family, that I started to look on Thanksgiving differently.  Having kids will do that to you.  For me, with the kids we have, it is easy to stop and give thanks.  I love 'em like crazy and they are darned good kids.  Decent, funny, smart, devilish - exactly my kind of people.  So they make it easy to slow the world down and say "thanks."

But it wasn't until the year my dad died, however, that I felt like I really grew into a solid sense of Thanksgiving.  My father, a lifelong smoker, had a heart attack in July of 2005.  He collapsed at my oldest brother's house and he (my brother) and then the local police and rescue personnel continued CPR on him until he miraculously came back.  All told he was dead about 10 minutes.

The consequence of his lifelong smoking, and being dead for almost 10 minutes, left him in rough shape.  He faced the choice of being amputated from the waist down and perhaps not surviving that operation, or letting nature take its course with the full knowledge that he probably wouldn't survive a week.  He chose to let nature takes its course and forgo the amputation.

Amazingly, he had most of his faculties (save for some short-term memory issues) after he came back from the dead.  His sense of humor was vibrant and ribald.  When one nurse came into his room and called out "What're you doing, Bob!" his response was an immediate "anyone I can get my hands on, c'mere, you're next..."  And after they told him what his health condition was and the likely outcome, he asked for a Coke and I asked him "do you think that's really a good idea, dad?"  He just looked at me over the top of his glasses and said "are you kidding me, Denny?  Whatta think it's going to do, kill me?"  After he drank the Coke and promptly barfed it all back up, I ran out of the room fearing I too would be sick.  As I left the hospital room, and my brother Dave took up the barf-pan from me and ran in, I heard my dad yelling at me "Come back you coward!"

So as a family we have this unbelievable example of courage in the face of adversity.  Knowing he had chosen death over dismemberment, he was fearless and calm, and funny to the bitter end. There were serious moments, just a few, as well.  After he made his choice, I heard him tell the doctor he wanted to be left alone a moment and then wanted to see his children.  We four gathered around his bed at University of Michigan hospital where he told us he loved us all and that we four were "his treasure."  We held hands, and cried a bit, and had etched onto our collective souls the very nature of Thanksgiving.  Dad lived three days after that conversation before passing quietly in his sleep in July of 2005.

He died at hospice, the very first night he was there.  I remember I remained until everyone else was gone.  Just to talk, to laugh.  At his funeral, the bag-piper we hired heard some of the stories about him and said there was a Scottish word describing people like him. The word has passed from my memory, but it's meaning remains.  It is a word whose meaning combines courage and hilarity.  Fits him him to a tee.

As I said, I was the last to leave him that night at hospice.  Though it was July, it was raining and I remember I wore my old leather coat.  I remember kissing him and saying goodbye, and then reaching for that coat - who knows why it sticks in my head that way, but it does.  As I pulled it on, it came to me that this was the last time I was going to see him.  I just knew it.  Shrugging my arms into the jacket, I turned and said to him "Dad, I love you."  He winked at me, made a mock gun out of his right hand, and shot me with it saying "you too, Denny.  I love you too."

He died about four hours after I walked out the door that night.

Those three days in July, 2005, the courage and effort of my oldest brother and the rescue personnel who saved him, and my dad himself and all he endured in those days along with what he made sure he said - they all taught me more about the nature of gratitude in those three days than I have learned in my other 46 years.  The last words I said to my dad, and those that he said to me, were "I love you." I am as grateful for those three days five years ago as I am any other memory or experience in my life.

Dad would have been 76 years old today, November 25.  I love him and miss him everyday.  And every day I remember the lesson life presented me in the form of those final three days with him. If you love someone, make sure you tell them.

So thanks for stopping by my blog today.  I hope this day especially finds you in the warm embrace of friends and family who get you, dig you, keep your secrets, laugh at your jokes, forgive you your shortcomings, and are made glad by the mere mention of your name.  You deserve all that and more.  Happy Thanksgiving, stay grateful my friends :-)

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com