ON GRATITUDE
Gratitude can turn a situation that has no apparent redeemable aspects into a learning experience that can even be transforming if we can leave our hearts and minds open. That is the wonderful advantage to those who have a faith that can see beyond the immediate willingness to risk. With love and gratitude in our hearts, we can transcend fear, we can learn and grow and share our joys and sorrows with others on the journey with us.
My wife, June, and I, met with a very real disappointment when we learned that our baby girl, who had been placed with us for adoption, was seriously handicapped. We still legally had the option of returning our little one, but she had by then emotionally become our daughter. We had learned that she was microcephalic, (small cranium) and that meant that she would be seriously retarded. Also she had some serious physical problems. While we anticipated that her handicap would contribute an unknown burden to our family, we would never have guessed that our caring for our daughter would be a gift, in that we would be learning some things that could come in no other way. Thus we were introduced into a larger world than we could have imagined. For all this we have been profoundly grateful.
As it later developed, we became deeply involved in the setting up of sheltered workshops and group homes that accepted both people from the community and long-term patients from government mental institutions. We would become directly involved in the lives of several of the mentally handicapped. Two such couples married and we assisted them in becoming independent.
Our dear daughter and our retarded friends became invaluable in teaching us to recognize how simple, direct and up front they were in expressing themselves. And they had their own unique and delightful sense of humor. They taught us how to be especially sensitive and aware of feelings they did not verbally express. These folks had their own special crosses to bear, with some personal physical disability from which they suffered and which they learned to take for granted. We are profoundly thankful for the destiny that gave us our handicapped daughter for that early part of her life. God knew that we needed to learn some basic lessons about life until she went away to live in a group home. These lessons came from our own involvement with programs for the retarded. The handicapped have all the range of human emotions, but often are unable to verbalize them, or to verbalize their degree of physical pain. We needed to learn to read nonverbally and we needed to learn what Elisabeth Kubler-Ross taught us—that all individuals must be perceived as whole, regardless of their ability to speak or express their physical condition. We had much to learn to prepare us for the many years of work we would do in the field of hospice and palliative care.
June and I were in on the ground floor of hospice and palliative care work which began in the late seventies in Ontario Canada. We have been privileged to accompany many patients on that final journey. We who visit the dying have learned to be sensitive, to tread carefully. It is essential to be able to sense how the patient feels before introducing one’s own thoughts, to listen with the inner self before trying to convey our own version of peace and hope. Above all, one must know that non-verbal communication may convey more than anything that can be said. No one can tell us how to acquire such a listening skill, for it comes from within. It is not uncommon to find a patient, unable to speak and the patient’s eyes may be the only means of communication.
Some hospice patients could not be cared for at home on their final days, so hospice workers follow them to the hospital. It was at St. Mary’s that I was introduced to palliative patients who were in need of visitors even though they were not in their final stages. Jane was on that list and that was how I met her. It was Jane who touched me more deeply than she ever knew, even though over a period of time, she was unable to say a word. Though she was speechless, her eyes and her smiles said it all. She was totally disabled with multiple sclerosis. The only muscles that could visibly move were facial and also her eyes. The rest of her body was rigid and the only way she could be fed was by a stomach tube.
All that I knew about her personally was that she had a son who lived in another state and that, on occasion, he had called to talk to his mother. The nurses knew so little about him that we felt that such a topic should be avoided for fear that it might be too painful. That lack of information made me feel apprehensive, I didn’t want to be awkward and draw a blank or worse, if I spoke about him. I had not had such a patient before and already I had learned that it was worse than useless to just gab for nothing.
Jane looked up at me with beautiful big eyes and she smiled. I probably said little, if anything. In leaving, I just brushed her cheek with my lips. Her eyes lit up and she gave me that beautiful smile again. I left knowing that somehow I had touched her without really communicating anything verbally. But I did not know how much Jane would affect me.
MS is a disease whose progress can be static for an indefinite period of time. I became a part of the hospital palliative care group and we scheduled our patient visits on a bi-weekly basis, so Jane came to expect me regularly for over a period of a year. During that time I did not observe any appreciable deterioration in her condition, but she did learn a bit about me from my one-person conversations. I would bring my harmonica and play for her, mostly from the big-band era. Perhaps she had loved to dance, once upon a time, and perhaps it took her back to another time and place. Who knows? And always I would give her a kiss when leaving.
But our communication was much more than just nonverbal. “Jane” I would ask her “From where do you get that beautiful smile? Do you know that it lights up the whole room!” “And your eyes, they sparkle so!” or “Don’t you know that you are beautiful?” “What is the secret for your smile? I wish I knew!” “I wish that you could let me in on the secret of how you are coping so beautifully.” I always held back my tears till I left her room, not wishing to shift the emotions of the moment. I was deeply moved by her glow. I still am.
Our children had all left home and most were in California where we had lived 25 years before. It became obvious to us that we should return there and our sojourn in Ontario was complete. But that meant leaving behind so many we had become attached to, especially the patients such as Jane.
Since our handicapped daughter was being beautifully cared for in a wonderful group home setting in upstate New York, ( but that is another miracle story for another day), our move meant that we would be returning to visit her once a year, if possible. So after being away for a year, one of the first side-trips I made on our next year’s return to the east was to see if Jane was still there in the same hospital room. She was, but it was obvious that she had significantly failed, though her countenance lit up when I greeted her, just the way it had before. I was too moved to speak. It wasn’t necessary. I hadn’t brought my harmonica. That was all right too. What does a final farewell mean? I don’t know, for even such a farewell seems transitory. Such deeply spiritual souls like Jane speak to me of something that is eternal. Was that what St. Paul was speaking of when he spoke of now seeing through a glass, but darkly?
At the beginning of this essay I spoke of how gratitude can transform a situation. What was the source of power that Jane found? Was it her gratitude just to be alive? We who have been in this field know that there is a transcending power, an “other” that may be accessed with gratitude by ordinary mortals, whether we are walking around or confined to bed. Meister Eckhart put it so beautifully: “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice.”
Home Page L.J. Essay About The Kennys Related Links Archives