Do I Need a Near-Death Experience to Become Bold and Grateful?

You don't need a near-death experience to become grateful, but it helps.  If the first one doesn't take, you might need two.  

In September, 2008, the spousal unit, Ron, ate some bad cheese at a resort in Quebec and developed a near-fatal case of listeria-meningitis.  Luckily, he was saved by massive amounts of antibiotics.  The doctors told me that if I had taken him to the hospital the night before, they probably would have sent him home.  If I had waited any longer, it would have been too late.

Ron was in the hospital for 10 days and came home wearing a portable antibiotic infusion pump for another 10 days.  For that period and the two weeks following, he was intensely conscious of his surroundings and grateful for his survival.  Every outing into the neighbourhood was wondrous:  colours were vivid and sparkling and people, plants, animals were all miracles of creation.

Then the wonder and gratefulness fell away with the autumn leaves and the winter of stress and anxiety returned.

Meanwhile, a post-recovery brain scan revealed a benign meningioma.  By March 2012, the meningioma had to be removed.  Ron seemed to recover quickly from the surgery, but two months later he had a setback and his condition became increasingly worse.  By September, he could barely function.  MRI evidence suggests his temporal lobe, left amygdala, and hypothalamus might have been "tickled" during the delicate surgery.  This might have affected his sleep, mood, memory, and motivation.

In December 2012, Ron began to recover.  This was accompanied by a new boldness and gratefulness, and it seems to be sticking.

Today we cycled out at 6:30 a.m. to watch the sunrise.  Ron adopted the persona of an Italian in the Tour de France and greets everyone with "Buongiorno."

"Buongiorno," he said to a lithe, long-haired jogger.  She smiled and said "good-day" back.

"I wish I had known this when I was 20," he said.

"Known how to be bold?" I asked.

"Yes, and grateful.  I was definitely not grateful when I was 20."

Do you need a near-death experience (or two) to remember to be grateful?

It's Thanksgiving - Am I Grateful?

It is Thanksgiving here in Canada.  I wrote this article of Thanksgiving Day reflections in 1998.  It is mostly still true today.

I'm thankful for being born in Canada in the latter half of the 20th century.  Because of this luck of my birth, I don't worry about being arrested, detained, and murdered solely because of my race or religion.  In Canada, we have a sense of connectedness -- we are all Canadians regardless of where we originate.  I am mindful that in other countries people live in fear of genocidal slaughter from their neighbours.

I'm thankful for being born in Canada in the latter half of the 20th century.  Had I been born even 10 years earlier my career, relationship, and reproductive choices would have been more narrow.  If I had been born 30 years earlier, I may have been discouraged from getting an education.  My friend's mother had to return a university scholarship because, in the 1940s, her family believed it would be wasted on a woman.

I'm very thankful for being born in a time when women are recognized as legal caregivers for their children.  I had a bicycle accident in 1960.  I was eight years old and living in Montreal.  My mother took me to the Emergency Department of a nearby hospital, but the doctors would not stitch up my bleeding and swollen lips until we could get my father's permission.  We sat in the waiting room for four hours until my father was located and could come to the hospital to sign the forms.  Any mother would rage at the senselessness of this.  Now, I can make choices, own property, and give consent in issues affecting myself and my child.  Nonetheless, I see no women in any of the trade apprenticeship courses that I teach.  I see that shelters are still full of women, but board rooms are not.

As a working person, I'm thankful for being born in Canada in the latter half of the 20th century.  I'm grateful to the workers who protested inequality and injustice, who fought the six-day, 60-hour work week, who fought for healthy and safe workplaces --  often against the police who were sent to break strikes.  Every worker in Canada has benefitted from the struggle and sacrifice of the early union members.  I'm aware that these struggles are not over.

I'm grateful for the connectivity made possible by modern technology, technology that did not exist until recently.  Through the almost-free Hamilton-Wentworth Community Network, I am able to connect to the Internet and have the wisdom of millions of people available to me.  They provide answers to questions simply out of their interest, generosity, and desire to make contact with others.  My friend, Sheila, lives on an island on the coast of  British Columbia.  Along with many other injuries, her spousal unit suffered vocal chord damage in a motorcycle accident.  He could only talk in a quiet, raspy voice.  This was affecting his confidence and self-esteem.  Sheila found a vocal chord web site in California and posted a message describing the problem.  The next day she received a phone call from a man in San Francisco telling her that a doctor in Vancouver had a new method of repairing the vocal chord injuries which she had described.  She was able to contact the doctor and schedule an appointment within 24 hours of posting her initial inquiry.

I'm thankful that I can experience this feeling of connectedness here in Canada in the closing years of this century.  At the bottom of my e-mail messages, I include a quote from Mitchell Kapur of the Electronic Freedom Foundation.  He says, "Unless the awareness of interconnectedness can stir compassion, it is of little use."  I hope our connectedness will help move humanity away from the hatred and prejudice of earlier times, and closer to compassion for one another.