Gratitude, That Tricky Emotion

I am beginning to believe that gratitude is, by necessity, a bittersweet emotion. It's height is proportional to the depths of the chasm at your feet. Maybe as a newbie to cultivating gratitude it's just easier to notice it when things are good and bad at the same time. And, really, when is that not true?

I'm reminded of the story that I can only find on the web as Kahn's Strawberry Story. It's a short story which I will shorten even further in twitter/haiku format:

Tigers high and low
Mice chew vine so I will fall
Ah, sweet strawberry!

So, back to me. I just dropped my sister off at the airport. She's been at our parent's house for the last week sharing with our sister the care of our Mom and support of our Dad as Mom navigates her last few days or weeks. We really didn't need to say that it was almost surely the last time she'd see Mom alive. I described for her a mix of emotions that I've been cycling through:

1) Mom's dying is completely normal and natural. It will happen to all of us (barring some unlikely combination of science-fiction-style breakthroughs). Since it will happen to each of us then, logically, it will happen to everyone around us. It fascinates me that something so mundane is - simultaneously - so fraught with disbelief and pain. I chalk that up to avoidance, fingers-in-ears-la-la-la denial and a lack of experience. Our culture is so death-averse that we do everything we can (humanely or otherwise) to avoid it and, when we fail, we hide our failures away and collude to ignore it. So ends the rational discourse.

2) It is tragic that my mother is dying. She will no longer be with us. How much of me is bound up with who she is and who she has been for me? I see so much of the good she gave me. How can I become who I need to become without her example and her (rarely given and always welcome) opinion? To the best of my knowledge, neither my mom nor I believe in a supernatural afterlife so this will be it! So ends the maudlin ramblings.

3) The progress of her cancer was slow enough that with reasonably aggressive treatment she's lived a year since her diagnosis. This has given her time to adjust to it and finally to set an awesome example for us. She has served us by allowing us to serve her to the end. Through it all, her concern is for her husband and children and grandchildren. This where my gratitude comes in. I have been so lucky that I have the privilege of... well, everything! I have a loving and committed extended family. I live close to my parents so I can be involved. I have both a supportive and deep church community and a joyful, supportive Aikido group; places and people with whom I can be my whole, complex, flawed, grieving, and celebrating self.

What, you might ask, triggered all this? I was driving to my parents this morning and I smelled the soul-stirring scent of the warm sun on the pine trees and the flowering chaparral. How could this possibly be a bad day?

Stress

I've been driving myself crazy by watching myself fritter away weekends and evenings. I'm stressed and I'm stressing myself for not reducing my stress! Realizing this, of course, (and feeling more dualistic when I'm stressed) leaves me two options: 1) relax to reduce my stress levels so I can be more effective and 2) Come on! Get to work! These problems aren't going to solve themselves, you know, you lazy bum!.

Hmm... Maybe there is a middle path. How can I both relax and work on what needs to be done? How can I avoid feeling overwhelmed with the magnitude of what I want to do?

Baby steps!

I haven't been writing my gratitude journal entries because it's been too daunting to come up with five new entries every day. Okay, how about one?

1) I am grateful for hot, home-made chicken soup. Mmmm, that's good.

Question of the Day (or Your Whole Life)

"What do you value most?"

A young woman died in an car accident in November. She was the daughter of friends and a friend of my daughter. My friends are living out one of my all-time worst nightmares.

At her service last weekend a young man who rode with her part of the way on her last trip told how she had really gotten him thinking that day with one question: "What do you value most?" She followed her question with the statement to the effect that if you didn't know the answer to that question how would you know what to do? It might seem superficial but with that context it is a very powerful question.

This is a good question in that context. I've started telling people a bit about her and her question. As a person with a tendency toward Process Theology, I believe that our impact on other people is our best form of immortality.

One of the greatest laments about the death of such a young person is that she had so much potential to change the world and that the world would no longer have the benefit of her unique presence. I am going to start asking other people her question. I will also pass along a bit of her story so that people will know a little about her. In this way, she will continue to make a difference in this world.