Things I Am Grateful For (2010)

It is the season for giving thanks. But I am not just thankful, I am grateful.

At this moment I am sitting alone in a motel room in my hometown. The weather outside is exceedingly crappy and I have no desire to slip, slide around town. I am here so that I can spend Thanksgiving with my mother. For the past several years she has resided here. My mother was fortunate to be able to live independently until she was 90 years old. Next month she will be 94. I will be here for that too and for Christmas. I come because at each holiday and special day, I wonder if it will be the last one that I spend with her. I am grateful to my two coworkers, Heather and Courtni who picked up my overnight shifts so I could come.

As I sat with my mother this afternoon, I could not help but think once again. This could be the last Thanksgiving. She seemed so tired and weak. She often gets that familiar far-way look in her eye as if she is already looking beyond this world into the next. Of her generation in the family, there are only two left, my mother and my aunt. I am grateful that I still have her in my life.

It probably would seem inconvenient for my siblings and I to live two hours away to keep her at this nursing home. It was suggested by my aunt that we move her closer to us in the cities. But that would not have been good for my mother. Here in her hometown she is still surrounded by friends and neighbors. Many of them become her personal support system when my dad died in 2005. She had neighbors who brought her mail in and got her groceries. There were others who helped by mowing her lawn and shoveling her snow. But this is small town. It is what they do and I am grateful to them.

When she got sick and could no longer live on her own, that support moved to the nursing home. Yes, it would have been more convenient to have her living close. But, I don’t think I would have the same confidence in the staff of any other nursing home. You see, the staff here consists of the sons, daughters and grandchildren of her longtime friends. In addition many are also former classmates of mine. I remember when my Dad was dying in this very nursing home. I, at one point, was overcome with emotions on that final day. I had to leave the room and stepped out into the hall. At that very moment, my best friend from high school was walking by. She didn’t say a word, but wrapped her arms around me and let me cry on her shoulder. I hadn’t seen her in years, but she was there when I needed her. I will always be grateful to the staff here for the care they gave my Dad in his final days and the care they are giving my Mom now.

In closing, I am especially grateful to all of my online friends from Twitter, Newsvine and Facebook. I do not think I could have survived all that I have been through in these past 5 years without the support of my friends online. We are not a community in the same way that my Mom has community here in her hometown. But we are a community in the way we come together and support each other. I have been touched in a profound way by the support I have received from people I am unlikely to ever meet. I am grateful and give thanks to you all.

What does Community Mean to me...revised

Several years ago, when I was a new writer on Newsvine, I was shown the value of community and wrote of it there. The original article was entitled "What does Community Mean to You." It was written during a time of extreme stress and crisis as I was at the beginning of a journey to be shared with my mother. In the two years since it was written. I have occasionally considered doing a revised version, an update on my life and hers. Mainly this is because I have Google Analytics on my Newsvine column and the original pops up in a search at least once a week. I happened to be looking at the recent stats on the site yesterday. And please, that note there was really no particular need for me to do so. You see, I am not submitting much to that site anymore. I think I was mainly curious to see if I had reached "0" hits for the day. I saw that, on Friday June 19, 2007, I had 5 hits. I dug further to see what was being read and was not surprised to find that the "Community" article I had written two years ago popped up. The surprise, however, was that two hits came from Iran, more specifically, Tehran. In the midst of all of the chaos, someone felt a need and did a Google search using the terms " community what you mean."

We are all each in our communities, citizens of a greater world. But, in the past week we have been reminded of how close we all are as we have been made witnesses to the extreme situation in Iran by way of Twitter and Facebook. Technology has made the world a much smaller place and we as individuals can have an "effect" and at the same time be "affected" by it. We have all become witness to history as global change is occurring a half a world away. Whether we like it or not, we each as individuals are also part of this change. At some point on Friday last, someone in the midst of a great crisis reached out in search and found my article. It doesn't appear by the stats that they stayed long, but they did later return. I can only wonder as to the affect of the words in my article.

I don't know if I can easily answer the question I posed on this article today. You see, my answer is different daily. It depends on my circumstances at the time. One thing I do know is that we as a people in this human race are all interconnected in ways that we might not always be aware of at the time. Our simple interactions with each other on a daily basis can at times have profound effects and we may never know about it.

I have been blessed in the two years since I wrote the original article. The situation has changed for my mother, who was the subject of the first article. I wrote of how individuals in her community assisted her so that she, at 90 years of age, was able to continue living in her home. Two years later it is no longer possible for my mother to live independently. She now resides in a nursing home in her small community and is being lovingly cared for by friends of mine and by the grown children and grandchildren of friends and neighbors of hers. Every time I visit her I am reminded of that community. Four years ago last week, my dad died in that same nursing home. The community was there for him then as well as for me.

So now, back to the greater question. What does Community mean to me? Right now, I feel part of this greater community as I have seen the events unfold and watched as the Internet community has reached out to assist in any way possible to the citizens of Iran who are part of our digital world. Personally, I felt the need to reach out last night myself as I was emotionally drained from an interaction with another Internet friend. I was again blessed as a "twitter' friend answered and helped comfort me in the the very wee hours of the morning when I was feeling very alone.

We are all part of this greater world community and it is imperative that we remember that. With each person that we meet individually in the communities in which we live or digitally across the vast expanse of the world by way of the Internet, we must remember to treat everyone with respect. If you have the opportunity to help someone, just reach out and do it. You may never know the effect of your action, but if we all practiced this each in our own communities, in our own interactions whether digitally or in person, we can and will change this world and make it a better place. This is what "Community" means to me.