{"id":14124,"date":"2015-02-15T16:24:48","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T21:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/?p=14124"},"modified":"2015-02-15T16:24:48","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T21:24:48","slug":"thank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/thank\/","title":{"rendered":"“thank you”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cranes\"“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>~<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Meister Eckhart<\/strong><\/p>\n

I<\/span>f you had visited my friend Lisa last week, the first thing you would have seen upon entering her living room is a large bright mobile hanging near the window \u2013 a thousand and one paper cranes strung on thread and suspended from a curved branch.<\/p>\n

The cranes were created over the last couple of months by visitors to the Hilltop Caf\u00e9, a small coffeehouse at the farm up the road from the Pine Hill School, where Lisa has been a beloved kindergarten teacher for many years. Anyone who came into the cafe this winter to eat or grab a coffee to go was invited to pause for a few moments to craft an origami crane and send healing thoughts Lisa\u2019s way. The result: the beautiful wall hanging in her\u00a0living room. Love made visible.<\/p>\n

The phrase \u201cit takes a village\u201d comes to my mind many times a day lately, for that\u2019s what we have here, a village of caring friends and thoughtful strangers who show up in all sorts of ways, and who do what they do in a spirit of love. There have been months of beautiful dinners, massages, flowers, stories written and pictures painted and cards sent; donations large and small from across the land; photos and memories shared, housecleaning, rides given, family and friends arriving to brighten the days. An abundance of much-needed, much-appreciated assistance, care, and concern.<\/p>\n

No one can change Lisa\u2019s diagnosis. And there\u2019s no denying the challenges she faces each day: pills to take and transfusions to endure and a new port to contend with. There are side effects to every medication. There is the unknowable future. There is no cure. But there is always healing, and healing is what she\u2019s choosing to focus on. There is also the beauty of the present\u00a0moment. I think of it as a\u00a0 bubble of grace, this sacred territory in which goodness and gratitude co-exist with illness.<\/p>\n

Some day, I know I\u2019ll look back on these winter days and the hours I\u2019m privileged to spend with my dear friend. And the prayer I\u2019ll say then is the same one I\u2019m saying now: \u201cThank you.\u201d I\u2019ll remember the record-breaking snows of 2015, the frigid cold, the racing start I need in order to get my car up the steep, icy hill to her house, and also the warmth that envelops me as soon as I walk through the door. I\u2019ll remember the hours we\u2019ve spent on the couch, talking about everything. \u00a0I\u2019ll remember fires in the fireplace and wedding plans (her son will be married next week, and Lisa will be there, having the first dance with her boy).\u00a0\u00a0I’ll remember\u00a0reading Anne Lamott out loud and how we got laughing so hard tears came to our eyes. I\u2019ll remember the two of us doing her PT exercises together on the bed. I\u2019ll remember afternoon meds and Reiki and cups of turmeric-ginger tea. \u00a0I’ll remember a flock of handmade paper cranes taking flight.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6075\"A<\/span>fter a rough holiday season, Lisa\u2019s medical team decided to try a new medication to reduce swelling from the tumor in her brain. She is one of the lucky ones: the drug has given her a window of feeling better \u2013 much<\/em> better. It\u2019s allowed her to take a short walk in the snow, to go downtown for lunch, to do some of the things that nausea and seizures and headaches have kept her from enjoying for months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know where my will has gone,\u201d Lisa said many times through the fall, as the hours ticked by and she found herself too weak and too weary get up off the couch. Now, she’s making up for lost time. And what is she doing with this unexpected gift of energy? Writing thank you notes. Given a day, a moment, an opportunity to ask, \u201cWhat now?\u201d my friend is choosing to affirm the abundance in her life. She is choosing to say \u201cthank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then, as more and more snow piled up outside last week, and as the temperatures hovered around zero, Lisa asked her husband to carry all their boxes of photos up from the basement. Grateful to be up and about at last, she embarked on an ambitious journey through the past.<\/p>\n

When I arrived last Monday, every surface in the dining room was covered with pictures; there were more boxes on the floor, a new photo collage artfully arranged on the refrigerator door, an arrangement taking shape on the table of pictures to be hung on the wall going down the hallway.<\/p>\n

So many memories! And such a reminder that life is long, full of twists and turns, love and loss, laughter and forgetting. Here was her husband Kerby, today a distinguished, white-haired eighth grade teacher; once, long ago, a seven-year-old boy in shorts and tap shoes, ready to twirl his somewhat heftier partner. Here, Lisa, a fresh-faced young mom with her three tow-headed little boys on a summer afternoon.<\/p>\n

Here, her son Morgan in his senior year of college, just off the lacrosse field, grinning, his arm around his lovely girlfriend \u2013 a photo so full of life and energy that, thirteen years later, it\u2019s still hard to fathom that this was to be his last day; or that after saying good-bye to his family that night, he would be brutally murdered while trying to help a young team mate who was being beaten up on a street near the Bates campus. Here, Lisa and her beloved horse Bentley, gone himself just three months ago, but a soul gift in that time of great sorrow, around whom Lisa began to construct another life, one that included a new home for her and Kerby, where she could ride and create her remarkable summer camps for children. Out of that deepest grief: more love.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4535_2\"T<\/span>ogether, we began sorting the stray photos into envelopes: good times, boyhood, early days, cherished animal friends, married life, family. . . . We studied a photo of her on a long-ago beach, stunning in her bathing suit, legs long and lean, hair wind-whipped. Gorgeous. \u201cThere\u2019s no going back there,\u201d I said. \u201cNot for any of us.\u201d And we agreed: it\u2019s ok. No one gets to go back. But we all have a choice about how we inhabit our now<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At one point Lisa looked up, turning to gaze out the window where the afternoon sun was turning the distant snow-covered mountains shades of rose and violet. \u201cEven if I knew this was to be my last week,\u201d she said, \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019d want to be doing anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in that moment, I looked at my friend with something that approached awe. She could have been regretting every single loss in her life, of which there have been many. Instead, she was choosing gratitude for all the good, for all the abundance, for all the love. What better way to pass a winter afternoon?<\/p>\n

\"images\"I<\/span>n the kitchen, there were enticing smells \u2013 dinner coming together. Ris\u00eb, the nurse who arrives early each morning as Kerby leaves for work, was making pasta sauce.<\/p>\n

For the last month, Ris\u00eb has been living in the guest bedroom at our house and spending days with Lisa, doing whatever needs to be done — organizing her medications, driving her to doctor\u2019s appointments, making sure there\u2019s something good to eat on the table on the nights that friends don\u2019t deliver meals to the door.\u00a0(And, on the days when we\u2019ve all been completely snowed in, Ris\u00eb has organized the linen closets at our<\/em> house; she\u2019s made sourdough bread, folded laundry, chopped vegetables with me for soup.) Sometimes, I pause and wonder: how did we get so lucky? I find myself praying all the time these days. \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”<\/em> ~ Melody Beattie<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lisa and I are both journal keepers. Lately we\u2019ve been talking about putting all our diaries and random writings together and burning them, something we\u2019ve both thought about for years but haven\u2019t quite been able to do. And yet, the words written in our ratty old notebooks were never meant for others\u2019 eyes. They were outpourings and rants, inner struggles brought to the page for resolution, private conversations with our most pathetic, angry, confused, uncertain selves. Sending them up in flames, we suspect, will be a kind of spiritual cleansing. She\u2019s pretty much ready to go for it, and I\u2019m pretty much ready to join her.<\/p>\n

So, we\u2019ve been envisioning a little ceremony\u00a0—\u00a0a few kind words of remembrance\u00a0and a good strong fire. Lisa\u2019s already started\u00a0going through her writings. The other day, she told me there was one journal she\u2019d found and decided to keep: the gratitude journal I\u2019d encouraged her to start during a particularly dark time years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found an entry in there about making Morgan dinner,\u201d she said, \u201cand how happy it made him. Reading that, I wasn\u2019t sad. It made me happy to remember it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And with that, Lisa was inspired to begin another project: writing a new gratitude journal. She found a simple, red blank book and gave that one to Ris\u00eb, suggesting she might wish to begin a gratitude journal of her own. (Later that night, I asked Ris\u00eb if she\u2019s ever had a cancer patient encourage her to keep a journal of each day\u2019s blessings. She has not.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got a new notebook, too. In it, I\u2019m already praying. \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

notes<\/span><\/h3>\n

*Heartfelt\u00a0thanks and hugs through the ether to all of you, my dear readers, who have reached out to Lisa over these last months with notes and donations to our fundraiser<\/strong><\/a>. (Click on the link to learn more about Lisa’s journey.) Your kindness is extraordinary, and these gifts continue to help enormously.<\/p>\n

*Congratulations to Jeanne M<\/strong>., winner of the vintage copy of The Shape of a Year<\/strong> by Jean Hersey. I know I’m not the only one who loved reading all the comments last week! \u00a0What a book list you’ve generated. \u00a0My next project: \u00a0compile all \u00a0those wonderful suggestions into a list that we can all\u00a0\u00a0refer\u00a0to easily. \u00a0Thank you so much for your suggestions — many old favorites here, and many more books I’m eager to search out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”\u00a0~\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Meister Eckhart If you had visited my friend Lisa last week, the first thing you would have seen upon entering her living room is a large bright mobile hanging near the window \u2013 a thousand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,29,30,32,34,14],"tags":[198,419],"class_list":{"0":"post-14124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-acceptance","8":"category-friendship","9":"category-gratitude","10":"category-healing","11":"category-joy","12":"category-soul-work","13":"tag-gratitude-2","14":"tag-thank-you","15":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}