It often happens that unexpected trials bring us new appreciation for our lives. Over the last couple weeks, through dealing with my father’s ailments as well as my own, my sense of gratitude has heightened and I’m seeing my life through new eyes.
Dad has been in the hospital in Florida for a stomach ulcer surgery that turned out to be tougher than we’d expected. I went to visit him and help him for several days, as I mentioned on my politics blog. When I got back from taking care of him, I immediately fell ill myself.
I spent most of the following week in a state of rest and apathy, sniffling and coughing and unmotivated to venture beyond the front door. I was vaguely frustrated, watching time slip by as I passed the hours with episodes of “The Daily Show” and “Felicity.” But I just didn’t have the energy to work on anything.
I’m still not sure what made me ill. I’ve been under the weather with something mysterious for the last couple months, though this was the first time it really laid me flat. I’ve often felt tired and pre-feverish, as if something’s about to hit. Is it a deep chest cold? Some sort of imbalance? Stress?
My aunt suggested perhaps I had “battle fatigue” after getting back from Florida—maybe adrenaline had carried me through the intensity of caring for Dad, then I crashed upon return. Whatever it was, it felt like the lurking illness of the last couple months finally caught up with me.
On top of feeling exhausted, I spent the week fretting about the illness. Its duration and strange nature—absent of most symptoms other than fatigue and subtle pressure in my head and chest—led me to all sorts of unpleasant “What ifs” about chronic and terminal conditions.
This often happens. I know I’m paranoid, but when I’m ill with something I can’t explain, it’s hard not to let words like cancer cast shadows in my mind.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about illness. Being sick for so long made me think about all the people who do have serious, long-term illnesses. I had vivid flash-forwards to being elderly or near death, lying feebly in a room somewhere and remembering when I was younger and could move about freely.
I happened to be reading The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s wonderful memoir about how, when she was exactly my age, she did contract a mysterious chronic illness that made her bedridden for years.
Bailey describes how her world became smaller. The snail in a flower pot by her bedside became her closest companion. Too exhausted to move around herself, she became enthralled with the pace, simplicity, and elegance of the snail, and absorbed in its tiny world. Meanwhile, she felt envious of her friends, who would bustle in with the rush and energy of the outside world, their most casual comments hinting of activities she could no longer do.
I vowed that when I got better, I’d be grateful for my health. And I am. I’m feeling better now and hope I’m permanently on the mend. I once again have the energy to write and move around, and I have a post-illness buzz, impatient to make up for lost time, busying myself with lots of projects that I envisioned when I was sick.
As I go about my business, though, I’m noticing the small details of the world more than I did before. Things I came to relish or look forward to when I was sick: the warm of the sunlight, the ease with which my cats move, the smell of spring.
In many other cultures, people scatter expressions of gratitude through their speech more than we do here in America. Tanzanians say the phrase Mungu akipenda—if God wishes—so often that it was easy to poke fun at them about it. (“See you tomorrow!” “If God wishes!” “Will you pay me back?” “If God wishes.”) In Arabic, the common phrase inshallah means the same thing: if God is willing.
These casual words point to a fundamental humility, an understanding that things may not go as planned. I hope to see you tomorrow, but it’s really in God’s hands. Rather than lending a sense of uncertainty to daily life, I think repeating these phrases serves to permeate these cultures with a sense of gratitude. Since things could change any time, today I can be grateful for what I do have.
My illness wasn’t in my plan, and Dad’s wasn’t in his plan either. But I’m glad to be reminded me of all we have to be grateful for.
