Being Thankful

Copyright © 2019

by Ralph F. Couey

Written content only

Thanksgiving is one of those unique American holidays, and while the traditional foods and activities are firmly established, the origins of some of those traditions is shrouded in historical ambiguity.  That being said, as everyone gathers around the table today, none of that will matter.

The traditional first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony in what would eventually be Massachusetts.  The colony had undergone a terrible trial in trying to establish their community in this new, but raw land.  When that first harvest came in, for really the first time, the colonists were able to eat a full meal.  This was something worth celebrating.

For a lot of our history, American was agrarian in nature.  Before industry took hold, it was the basis for the economy.  Anyone who's been a farmer or known one also knows how chancy that industry is.  There has to be a last frost early enough to allow the soil to be turned in time for planting.  There has to be sufficient rainfall, but a minimum of crop-destroying severe storms (hail, in particular).  There absolutely cannot be invasions of pests or locusts or grasshoppers, as farmers in the Dakotas would find out in the 19th century.  As summer wanes, there is the desperate race to get the harvest in and stored before the first plant-killing frost.  For the farmer, summer was four or five months of very long days, short nights, and constant worry about the immediate future.  Back then, if your crops were destroyed, there was no grocery store to back you up.  A successful harvest meant one thing:  Survival.  

As our economy shifted from primarily agriculture to industry, and now to information technology, that primal concern was largely forgotten.  No matter how bad the summer was, there was always the grocery store.  The celebration of the fall harvest, and giving thanks for the shower of plenty, gradually became more of an emotional moment when family would gather for food, fun, and of course, football.  The NFL used to have one game, Detroit and whomever was scheduled to play them.  Now, there are at least three games on the schedule, which means that before and after dinner, the menfolk are gathered around the television while the ladies gossip over jigsaw puzzles.  Even then, it has always been a holiday that warms the heart.  Nowadays, the political divide in this country is so deep and tribal, that media outlets are filling the airwaves with suggestions on how to keep the peace, and keep the dinner from turning into angry discourse.  That makes me sad.  You would think that there would be one day a year when we could leave the political nastiness lying in the snow where it belongs.  

I would hope that we still love our family more than our politics.

But I really didn't want to dwell on negative thoughts for this offering.  During the long night that constitutes our watch over the safety of the people of Hawai'i here at the Emergency Operations Center, my thoughts began to trend to a frank consideration of the things in my life for which I am truly thankful.

First of all, my life.  In 2003, I underwent a cardiac cath, my first of four.  During that procedure, when the contrast dye was injected, my heart quit and I...went away.  You can read about the details of that experience in the referenced post.  I should have died, not just once, but three times that year.  In the intervening sixteen years since then, I have come to know just how precious a thing life is, and why not a minute of that gift should be wasted.  

Every day presents us with the opportunity to do good, productive things.  Anger and hate is a waste of time and opportunity, particularly when framed by a political debate driven by politicians and pundits on both sides for whom the lie has become the coin of the realm.  In 23 different places, the Bible commands us to love one another, that the evidence of that love will identify us to others as Godly people.  The occasions when family gathers are rare these days, and so it should be celebrated with love and filled with the kind of stories that define us as family, and reliving precious memories, as well as catching up on each other's lives.  If we feel so inclined, Monday we can go back to spewing hate and anger.  But let's try to make Thanksgiving a sanctuary of love.  Life is just to short, too valuable to expend it on bad behavior.

I am thankful for my wife.  Nobody knows what it is that happens inside of us when we encounter The One.  From a biochemical perspective, it is almost impossible to clearly characterize.  All I know is the first time I laid eyes on her, I knew my life had changed.  We've been married 42 years and weathered some pretty bad storms.  But I always knew she had my back, as I had hers.  She believed in me when I had lost all hope in myself.  She encouraged me when I needed it (including the occasional boot to the rear), and celebrated my rare triumphs.  She stayed with me when logic and prudence would have dictated a hasty retreat.  Together we raised four children to adulthood, although I readily admit that my frequent long absences with the Navy meant she did most of the heavy lifting, all the time while holding down a challenging career as an OR Nurse.  I married way above my paygrade, and I'm sure she could have done much better than me.  But my enduring memory of her love and devotion was coming out of anesthesia after that near-death experience and the first thing I saw was that smile; the one she saves only for me.

I am thankful for family.  I love our children (although they're really adults now) and our grandchildren are all sources of unbound joy and love.  And, all our hopes for the future.  We'll be gathering, perhaps for the one of the last times, on the Big Island in December to help celebrate Robbie's retirement from the Navy.  I look forward to those six too-short days of being together within the comforting cloud of love and happiness.  It will be a time when enduring memories will be formed, embraced, and stored within that chest of memories that is the human heart.  There have been, for this clan, good years and bad years.  But even in the darkest times, we have shared each other's burdens and thereby lightened that onerous load.  We are an honest tribe, perhaps brutally so at times.  But we love enough to want to walk alongside during those dark valleys, and keep each other on the right path.  Family is there when we are born, and will be there after we pass from this life.  The one true unbreakable bond.

I am thankful for my parents.  My own experiences have revealed how terribly difficult raising a human being can be, and the burden of worry that never quite goes away.  I know they did their best, although I am sad that I didn't take all their lessons to heart.  Throughout a difficult adolescence, I never doubted that I was loved and cherished, that they made a home that was well and truly a safe place to be.  I am glad they lived long enough to see their grandkids, that they knew that life would go on in their absence.

I am thankful for my sister.  Being siblings is never easy, but once we left the arrows and spears of youth behind, I  have come to know that she is not only my sister, but my friend.  She is wise in ways that I lack, and I have come to rely on her wisdom.

I am thankful for friends.  At different times and places, we will acquire acquaintances through the numerous interactions in work, play, and worship.  Some we will grow close to, but there are a precious few who enter our lives and despite time and distance, will never leave.  These are people who we have fun with, who we trust implicitly.  We share many things in common, the most valuable being those times of total honesty when we need the advice and guidance only a best friend can provide.  And also those times when they come to us, and bare their very soul, knowing that whatever passes in those moments will be held safely inviolate.  Trust is the thing that defines the very best of friendships.

I am thankful for the experiences of my life.   Things we live through, both good, mundane, and bad, become the unforgiving classroom through which we learn.  Things happen which create depths of sorrow and heights of giddy joy.  There are lessons in all those experiences, if we are carefully aware to listen.  I have had some triumphs.  I have also had moments of unaccountable stupidity.  I have been deliriously happy, and crushed in sadness.  From most of those times, I have learned; from some, I haven't.  But each day is a new class, a new opportunity to learn.

For some thirty years, I rode motorcycles.  Those memories are still among the most cherished I possess.  Even now, my brain summons up unbidden a remembrance of racing along a curvy mountain road through a forest afire with autumns colors, the road ahead dappled in sun and leaves.  Or gliding along through western Kansas, between vast amber fields of wheat under a perfect dome of blue.  On a thousand such roads, I found myself.  

Later in life on the advice of my Doctor, I took up hiking.  We were living in Northern Virginia at the time, agreeably close to the Appalachian Trail.  In those five years, I hiked about 200 miles of that trail during oppressively hot summer days, delightful spring afternoons, glorious autumns, and cold winter days when the only sound I could hear was the creaking of  leafless trees.  I encountered wildlife, including three black bears, and in a time of great stress, those hikes were moments of grace and healing.

On the shores of great oceans, in the forests of high mountains, the vastness of unending deserts, and even the sidewalks of the urban jungle I saw the unending beauty of God's creations.  I will never forget those moments that I was able to set everything else aside...and just be.

I am thankful for age.  Well, mostly.  We acquire knowledge through books, instruction, and study.  But the gift of wisdom can only come through the nexus of pain and experience.  In many ways, I am a much smarter person now than I was thirty years ago.  In other ways, I still have much to learn.  But while it's easy to focus on the decline of the body and mind, the years have brought me the joy of watching children grow into adults, and seeing that process repeating itself through grandkids.  It is a comfort that I know the family will go on, that the memories we have made will be passed to future generations.  I doubt I will be remembered very far into that future, but I am grateful for the opportunity I had to have a hand in shaping the years ahead.

I am thankful for the times in which we live.  I have always been fascinated by technology, and in my lifetime, I have seen the evolution from simple calculators to super computers and the coming age of artificial intelligence.  I still marvel from time to time at the power of the phone I so casually carry on my belt, that the world, even the universe literally exists just a few finger-swipes away.  I have also been a big fan of space exploration, ever since my first reliable memory of listening to Allan Shepherd's suborbital flight on the radio.  Yes, the radio.  Recently, we saw for the very first time the (minor) planet Pluto in incredible detail.  We have seen images of comets and asteroids far beyond what we thought were the limits of our solar system.  We know now that the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud exist, and that the realm of the sun goes almost halfway to the nearest star.  We have learned about the incredible array of stars in the universe, from placid main-sequence stars like our own to unimaginably violent stars like quasars and magnetars.  We know that at some point we will have front row seats to the beautiful violence of supernova explosions when the stars Antares, Betelgeuse, Spica, and Pegasus A light up our skies in the next million years or so.  Mainly, I am fascinated by the fact the sizeable knowledge we now possess is dwarfed by what we still don't know, or even know what to ask.  In the future, the march of technology will allow us to learn even more, and if we pay attention, then you will share with me those moments of wonder of looking up at the night sky and wondering if there's someone else out there looking back in my direction asking the same unanswerable question.

I am thankful for the talents I have been blessed with.  I love music, and have learned how to play instruments.  I have a passable voice and I love to sing.  I have experienced the joy of writing, and the utter frustration of writer's block.  And those few golden moments when I look at words I've written and know that I nailed it.  I love having a sense of humor, and watching people laugh.  While those days are long past, I love that I had some athleticism and played a pretty good game of softball, and got pretty good at bowling, both of which I was able to share in some ways with our kids.  I know now that we are given these talents to share with others, be it family or friends, or the honor of sitting around a table with a group of musicians giving life to the music of Ireland.

There are fewer days ahead than behind, and while I still presumably have a couple decades left in me, I also know that in a moment of capricious chance it could all end with the suddenness of turning off a light switch.  There will be times of joy, and moments of loss, as people I know and love pass from this life.  I do wish I had done some things better or different, but as I approach that inevitable end, I know that my life, for whatever it was, was uniquely mine.  There are generations before us who have lived and died, and many generations ahead who will do the same.  In the end, what I've done and how I lived will have no impact on the greater story of humanity.  Perhaps someday there will be someone looking at a small stone memorial describing the years between birth and death and idly wonder just what kind of person I was.  But the short time I spent in that place described as "the other side," I know that what awaits me is filled with joy and peace, as well as insight and wisdom beyond the capability of this mortal human.  I will be remembered for a short time by my family and friends.  But over time, that will fade and I will joint the roster of the nameless and faceless whose light shown ever so briefly in the constellation of the past.

I am thankful. And I have no real regrets.  Who and what I am has been shaped by how I've lived.  And I will be ever grateful for the road I have traveled.