Thankful Grateful Blessed

I was pleased to see this sign in Doug’s care home again this year. Last year I posted a picture of it on Insta:

"louiseellsauthor

My husband’s care home is decorated for Thanksgiving. Many of our (one-sided) conversations this week have started with my reading this sign, debating the difference between “thankful” and “grateful” and then listing ten things I am thankful for, ten things I’m grateful for, and ten ways I’m blessed. It’s been a lovely reminder of just how rich and full my life is, and how very spoiled and lucky I am. #happythanksgiving #thankful #grateful #blessed #dementiasucks #loveforthewin"

Then, I had turned to the OED and the internet to remind myself of the difference between “thankfulness” and “gratefulness” as I tended to use both terms somewhat interchangeably. (Good thing I’m not an English teacher or literary fiction writer . . . oh, wait, oops! Ha ha.) 

One year on, I still use the terms as synonyms, but at least I’m more aware of the distinction (as I understand it).

To be thankful is to be pleased, aware of my good fortune, a feeling and a reaction which is internal. To be grateful is to show appreciation, often towards a person. Thankfulness is a feeling, whereas gratefulness is an action. 

I use the word “gratitude” to cover both, which may not be precise, but really, when I’m listing all the reasons & things I’m thankful for, grateful for, blessed to have & to be . . . precision is less important to me. 

Two reasons I am full of gratitude and know how incredibly blessed I am:

I fed Doug his dinner on Thanksgiving Monday, and went home to an empty house. I hadn’t invited myself to a dinner anywhere; Thanksgiving was going to be a non-event. (And that’s okay.) When I opened the entryway door - there, waiting for me, were pumpkin pie, whipped cream, and a jar of cranberry sauce, from Lorie. (We’d picked the berries earlier that afternoon in our local bog.)

This weekend I was unable to visit Doug.

On Sunday afternoon, when I was feeling especially tired and grumpy and old and discouraged, my phone pinged with a text. 

A wonderful photo of Doug, and a cheerful, lovely, loving message from my sister. 

I am truly thankful, extremely grateful, extraordinarily blessed. 

On Liminality

Autumn has always been Doug’s favourite season. He loved the colours, the cooler temperatures, the camaraderie of his Hunt Camp friends, and harvesting from the garden and the wild. The outbreaks (yes, plural) under control at his home, I am able to visit again, and take him outside on these glorious days. His eyes are closed most of the time, but I hope he still loves what he can feel and imagine of the colours, the temperature, his remembered weeks at camp.

Were he well we’d have gone foraging for mushrooms this weekend, and picked cranberries at the bog. Our kitchen would smell of pickles, chutneys, and jellies; fall preserved in jars to gift at Christmas. Or maybe we’d have seized the chance for a paddle on the placid lake, or tackled the garden. Were he well he’d be preparing for his hunting week with his friends, and talking already about ice fishing.

I am aware of liminality at this time of year. Waking to frost on the ground and feeling the first hint of winter in the air, but peeling off a layer of clothing mid-afternoon to embrace the late summer heat. The shifting shoreline - sandbars appearing and disappearing in a matter of days. The transition from summer to winter is slower than that of winter to summer, but equally dramatic. 

I am keenly aware of the clouds’ reflections on the lake today. Soon there will be ice and snow - beautiful in a different way. 

The sky fills with the smoky scent of the last of the summer camp fires and the first of the fall bonfires, and the sound of flocks of geese, and the sight of the trees in their autumnal colours. Muted & brilliant, ochre & orange, red & burgundy, mustard & mulberry. 

Next weekend will be Thanksgiving, and three weeks from today the third anniversary of Doug’s first day in Long Term Care. In my dissertation I argued that “care homes for the elderly are transitional areas, home yet not home, often a last place to live before death.” The transitory, liminal nature of a care home. For the “elderly.” Ha. What did I know? (Yes, Ms Munro, who did I think I was, indeed?!)  

The day before yesterday we finished the novel we were reading. The ending, although happy, caught me unawares. I blinked quickly, and steadied my voice, but nonetheless my nose dripped into my mask.

I am surprised, every time, when something catches me off guard and I cry. His handwriting inside my lunch bag; I am trying not to wash it off, but it’s fading away and will soon be gone. One of his photographs which hangs on the hall where it has always hung, some days makes me stop in wonder that we ever walked that path together and realise anew that we’ll never walk that path again. 

I think I should be getting better at endings. I am not.