Carlton: The Gratitude Teacher

Twelve years ago today, I lost my Dad. While it is true that we had our differences, we learned to live with those differences and bridge those gaps in the end.

Here is a priceless photo of him at eleven years of age. It's priceless simply because I possess a photo of my father at age eleven. But more priceless is how it came to be in my possession and the inscription on the back. I don't know how old I was when I decided I wanted a wallet-size photo of him. It was sometime in my late childhood—I may have been eight years old, maybe ten. I dug through family photos and came across this one. Then I asked him to autograph it for me. He put a green Bic pen in his mouth, and from his hospital table (that was tall enough to roll over the special bed he needed to breathe while sleeping), he had me hold onto the photo to keep it in place, and he signed it. "To Cindy from Daddy."

I've kept it always. I will keep it always. It is still in my wallet, and it has been in my dozens of different wallets over the years. Thinking about him on the anniversary of his death is a good time to reflect on what his example taught me about gratitude.

The reason my father wrote with that pen in his mouth is that he had had polio. He contracted polio in 1955, the peak of the epidemic that lasted from the 1940s into the 50s, killing hundreds of thousands and paralyzing (by various degrees) those who survived. At the time, he was newly married, a body-builder, and a tree surgeon. It was the height of the hurricane season and he was working long, feverish days to clean up tree wreckage in Southeastern Massachusetts. He, my mother and my then one-year old sister lived in a city apartment building, on the sweltering third-floor. Two polio vaccines had been developed at the time, but none was widely available or used until the early 1960's.

My father went from his happy newlywed, Superman-like days to being hospitalized in an iron lung for almost two years. Doctors did not predict his survival. The polio wards were awful places to say the least, and many horror stories come out of them. I remember my father talking of doctors visiting a roomful of patients and openly betting with other physicians about patients' "making it."

When he returned home, he was a shell of his former self. He weighed under 100 pounds (and stayed that way for the rest of his life). He needed that special bed to push air in and out of his lungs at night. During the day he consciously had to remind himself to breathe. He could walk—his legs still strong, but he could not use his arms. They hung limply and he crossed them together in front of him. He had slight movement in a few fingers which enabled him to lift lightweight items. For example, my mother left beverages for him in the refrigerator and he opened the refrigerator with his foot, then used those fingers and a thumb to grasp hold of the drink, and then he placed it in a special drink holder that was attached to his wheelchair. He sat in the wheelchair and bent down to drink with a straw.

He learned to type with his feet, write with that Bic pen in his mouth (his pens were all chewed up at the tips), pick up the phone with his foot (then place it on the floor and bend down on his knees to talk). Basically, if it could be done, he would do it. He had to have his meals fed to him. He needed help with toileting at times and he had to be bathed and dressed. But he got out, he walked, and devoted his life to a life of study and helping others, and he taught his daughters everything he knew.

Most of all, though, he devoted his life to a life of gratitude. I heard not one complaint—ever—uttered from his mouth. Of course he had faults—he got endless joy out of nitpicking my mother—but how could one deny him any bit of joy (even if at my mother's expense)? And if I think of the things he could not do—basic things we take for granted—it is in those I learn the most from him. He could not scratch an itch, control the temperature of food being put in his mouth, pick himself up from a fall, reach something on a shelf.

What does all this have to do with a blog about Lyme disease? This: When I feel sorry for myself, I just think of him. I might not be able to drive as much as I want to, do as much as I want, think or speak as clearly as I'd like to, but I can scratch an itch, control the temperature of food going into my mouth, pick myself up from a fall, reach things on a shelf. And a hundred other things he could not. There is not one reason on this earth for me to complain. Yes, it is important that I acknowledge my feelings, but then I must get on with it and get on with my recovery. For there has been great strides in my recovery, and unlike my father's illness, mine can be recovered from. 

Here's to you, Carlton. With gratitude.