Finding Gratitude in Death
My journey to peace while watching my mother die.
In 2009 my husband and I were visiting family for Christmas. That year, one of the families had decided to only gift each other hand made presents. Brock and I loved this idea and planned to do the same the following year. Because I’m not great with tools, like my family members, I decided to do something a little different. I had been saving a special unused leather notebook. I planned to write Brock a note of gratitude every day until the following Christmas. Some days I would write a couple of sentences. Some days I would write pages. Some days I’d be so mad at him it would take me way too long to think of something I was grateful for.
By the end of the following year, I had compiled 365 entries. It truly was a labor of love. My husband was extremely touched by the gift. To this day, many years later and many kids later, he continues to talk about the impact the journal has had on him. I am so grateful that he was able to feel my love for him through this simple gift.
But this is the kicker…this gift for my husband was actually the greatest gift I ever received.
I received the gift of gratitude.
No matter how mad, frustrated, or annoyed I was at my husband on certain days, I had to force myself to still see the good. Every day, searching for the positive, “trained” my brain to look for the value in every complicated situation. That year I received the greatest gift of all. I had learned how to control my thoughts by looking at any situation differently.
Because I was writing out my feelings, I had to think about them, feel them, express them, make order, and sense of them. It made me also take the time to see where I was wrong in the situation. It made me think about how my husband might have felt. It made me see things from his point of view.
This act, because repeated daily, turned into a new habit. I didn’t plan for any of this to happen.
Aristotle said,
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.”
It’s easy to be grateful when you have everything you want and when things are going your way. But true gratitude is finding the value in the hard, the complicated, and the not so beautiful things of life. This is where we truly learn gratitude, the kind that sinks into our bones, the kind that stays with us, and that isn’t fleeting.
John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, delivered a speech for the Commencement Address at Cardigan, his son’s high school. Following is a small section from his speech. It shows his gratitude. It shows his wisdom. He knows the secret to living a life well is choosing how we react to it — what we learn from it.
“Now (most of) the commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I’ll tell you why. From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”
Can I do this? Will I be able to see the message in my misfortunes?
Life is a series of crossroads. I am not the first to be here. But, now it’s my turn. How will I react?
My mother is dying.
It’s ugly and it’s heart wrenching.
It’s also complicated. Some days I forget she has cancer. And I feel guilty that I forget. And some days I’ll cry in the middle of the grocery aisle at Ralph’s because I see a bag of pecans. My mom makes the BEST pecan pie.
Most days I cry because I know how much she’s hurting. I know how much she wants to live. I know how much she wants to have her normal life back.
A few days ago she told me the weirdest thing about knowing you’re going to die is that you have nothing to look forward to. You don’t get excited about buying new furniture for the house, or going on a fun trip with the family, or even going to lunch with friends. You just
wake up
each
day
and
wait
to
die.
I’m faced with a new challenge. Can I find the value in this situation? Can I write in my gratitude journal that I’m grateful for death?
Probably not, at least not for now.
Someday I hope I am wise. I hope I will see beauty in the natural process of life but for now, I will settle to be grateful for my mother’s life.
In our current day, we look for ways to extend life, to forget about death at all costs. Extensive research in the study of longevity has helped the human race to live into their 100s. We now focus on looking like we’re 20 when we are in our 50s. Why are we focusing on extending our lives instead of focusing on living the one we have, better? Marcus Aurelius said,
“Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won’t be able to do THIS anymore?”
Are you living your life so well TODAY that the only reason you don’t want to die is because you will miss this very day? As I began studying Stoic philosophy it was a little off-putting how much attention was given to death. What I continued to learn is that the Stoics only focus on death to clarify it’s reality. Because it’s unavoidable, something we can’t control and not avoid, we should learn from it. And that’s just what the Stoics did.
“When the longest- and shortest-lived of us dies their loss is precisely equal. For the sole thing of which any of us can be deprived is the present, since this is all we own, and nobody can lose what is not theirs.”
MARCUS AURELIUS
With my mother’s death imminent it has forced me to see the beauty in her struggles. To see the beauty in our difficult and sometimes strained relationship. I’m so grateful for her beautiful life. I’m so grateful for her unique and difficult upbringing. Her struggle has taught me to be strong, her example has taught me to not give up, her love has taught me that every life is beautiful.
With the Thanksgiving holiday having just passed my heart is especially tender to the love and gratitude for a mother that loved me so much I never for one second had to doubt if she did.
It’s strange to say now, but I am grateful to know that my mother will be dying soon. I have been afforded a great gift not given to everyone. My mother fortunately hasn’t been taken from me abruptly. I have this precious time right now, TODAY to share special moments with her, to express my love to her, to ask her questions I never took the time for previously. I don’t have to live with the guilt of things unsaid, and love and appreciation unshared.
The threat of death has taught me to shed the things that once bothered me about my mom. The threat of death has taught me to only see beauty because that’s all there really is. Every single life has beauty and will enhance ours if we are willing to let that beauty shine through. The gift of practicing gratitude is that it teaches us to look past the muck that we all are responsible for, and instead see what matters most, the beautiful!
“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.”
SENECA
I’m so fortunate to have lived life so that I can feel the love of a mother — of my mother. There is no other love quite like it. Death will never take her love away from me. The only thing her death will leave behind is the love and gratitude of a life well-lived.
