Why I give thanks

“I coulda been a businessman, I was too hot-headed, Plus I never had the money, plus I kinda got arrested …”

Now that’s a first line of a song that gets your attention. “Critterland” by a singer named Willi Carlisle jumped out of the Folk Alley background stream at me Wednesday morning. By the time he finished the second verse, I had dropped everything and looked up the lyrics online.

It’s a song that takes a stand, and it’s a unique stand that makes you think, and I don’t believe I completely agree with his stand but I’m still thinking. I’m bringing it up Thanksgiving morning because of one line in the middle of the song:

I think love is a burden if it ain’t brave.

I had been trying to put into words how I could be thankful during this, which surely qualifies as the worst year of my life. For the first half of 2023, I helped my dear Red negotiate emergency rooms, then hospitalization, and then hospice. For the second half of 2023, I have been negotiating the reality of her loss, which believe it or not caught me by surprise, even though I know full well what a “hospice” is.

She was the toughest cookie I ever knew, and so I knew if anyone was going to beat a fatal disease, she would. That was my expectation up until the moment the hospice nurse told me Red was “transitioning,” and I had only 21 hours after that to revise my expectation.

“Love is a burden if it ain’t brave.” It takes bravery to commit yourself to a partnership with another human being, forsaking all other potential partners, and work on that partnership for a quarter-century, and I’ll tell you, facing the “transition” has taken every ounce of brave I can muster.

Twenty-six years is a good long time, but it would be easy to be jealous of the couples who get a half-century — my parents got almost 62 years, for example. Still, I am as sincerely thankful as I have ever been on this Thanksgiving Day.

I am thankful that Red was brave enough to commit to a partnership with a guy who had three unsuccessful partnerships behind him and was facing a second bankruptcy. She saw something in me that I’m not sure even I saw.

I am thankful for those 26 years. I’ve spent 26 years writing about her from time to time, but words fail me when I try to sum up those 26 years beyond simply saying, I am grateful.

I am thankful that after three months of trying to figure out what was wrong, and after seven weeks in the hospital first to get her strong enough and then to go through aggressive chemotherapy, we had another seven weeks in the hospice to get to know each other again and have time to say the things you hope you’ll have time to say before it’s too late.

I am thankful that Red told me what she wanted me to do in those final hours — read to her — and that I was able to deliver that for my precious love.

I am thankful for the staff at Unity Hospice, who are among the kindest, most loving and most courageous people I’ve ever met. They created a safe and gentle place for the hard journey she had to take.

I am thankful for the friends and family who have checked in to see how I am doing but gave me space to deal with these feelings in my own way. I am thankful for a daughter-in-law who I believe has been grieving almost as hard as I am, and I am thankful for Son of Red and the Sons of Son of Red, all of whom I have gotten to know in new ways.

I am thankful for the tears I am spilling as I share these words, for they are an essential part of the healing. I realize now I will never be fully healed. You’re not supposed to “get over” a love this real and deep, you just move to the next chapter. I found an appropriate plaque a few days into this new adventure, and the wise words now hang on the kitchen wall: “I trust the next chapter because I know the author.”

Most of all, I am thankful that, 26 years ago, I decided to be brave.