“You must be so grateful.”
Please repeat that sentence five times, each time placing the emphasis on a different word. Continue to do this until your left eye starts to twitch. Don't stop. Keep repeating the sentence, randomly placing the word emphasis until your hair hurts. This will be the point at which you are in MY ballpark.
“You must be so grateful” is the sentence that has replaced, “How's Rich doing?” and each time my brain responds with Really?!?! Really.... But I smile and mumble something that hopefully sounds like a confirmation when I madly desire to respond with one of the following:
“REALLY?!?!..... Really.”
“Must I?”
“Exactly how grateful is SO grateful that I MUST be?”
Problem is, I can never quite tell if it is an assumption or a command. No matter how many times I adjust the word emphasis. Truly I am not trying to be a bitch, I seriously need some instruction here. Okay, partly I AM being bitchy about this. Why? Because I am so fed up with being told how I must be feeling. I want to believe the intention is to validate me, but a) it doesn't, and b) it's just annoying.
Here's the deal. I find it impossible to feel grateful when I'm watching my husband suffer on any level. This is why I fail miserably at the whole christianity thing. Seriously. I struggle watching Rich have a rough day, I for damn sure couldn't sit through a two hour movie of his torture and murder even if Mel Gibson did it. I've always thought that instead of celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ, it might be helpful to celebrate his teachings. Once a year do a renactment of the Sermon on the Mount with a traditional feast of bread and fish, decorate with chicks and bunnies and candy till you puke. That's what I'm talkin' about.
Sorry. I digress.
It's not always easy to walk in gratitude when you've had a tough day at work and you're driving home to your second job where you must be upbeat, and find the energy to accomplish all the things that need done there. It's difficult to be grateful when you're tired all the time and always struggling not to think about the person he used to be before cancer changed him. Before cancer changed me.
Luckily I have a cell phone. Because one of the valuable lessons I've learned in this is.....don't wait till you get home to ask how his doctor's visit went. So yesterday I called him on my way home to see how his visit went with McGee, post last week's CAT scan. (Any day now I expect him to start glowing in the dark). I could tell when he answered the phone that he was in a good mood so I was stupid enough to be hopeful. It went like this.....
“Dr McGee says things look good. The tumors in my liver have grown, but not too much....and there are some new ones but they're pretty small.....so I asked him what happens next and he says I haven't had enough time to heal yet so we'll just wait awhile...and he wants me to talk to Dr Kelli (our PCP) and see how she wants to handle the problems I'm having now.....and then we talked about the Master's (golf and then more golf) ….and then he asked how I'm feeling and he says I'm doing great and I look really good for all I've been through......”
On a cell phone it's very easy to claim static and even drop the call so you can collect yourself. I have to pull it together so that by the time I get home I can sell Happy.
Sorry. Gratitude is not my form of currency. If it were, I never would have fought to make more of myself and my life. I would have stagnated in my gratitude for what I already had. I never would have fired the ass-wipe who called himself an Infectious Disease doctor and got someone who could help Team Rich. I never would have left a job that made me miserable and worked towards something better for me and my family. I would have stayed where I was and been grateful to have a paycheck.
Gratitude can be an offering or an excuse.
For the first time since he almost died, Rich played Eighteen today. He shot an 89. He even had a Birdie. (For those who don't know Golf...trust me....this was huge.) When I called him on my way home he got choked up trying to tell me how wonderful it was. Yeah, in that moment I had a white hot blinding flash of gratitude.
Yeah, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for cell phones. I'm grateful Rich had a good day of golf. I'm grateful that Dr McGee is so good he could sell mosquitoes. I'm grateful for so many brief flashes of light in this darkness. I just don't have time to wax poetic on command when I still have mountains to climb.
Lest I reveal myself as a total bitch, I will admit that I give thanks more times and in more ways than I have words to explain. Those moments of gratitude are so sacred as to be solely between me and the Giver. I have neither the time nor desire to explain or assure anyone of them.
“You must be so grateful.”
No. I mustn't. Grateful is Rich's job and he's REALLY good at it. My job is--Fuck No! That's not good enough.
