Down on our luck…

I have some friends who need work, stone broke, down on their luck.  I suppose I should be grateful I’m not in their shoes.

I have neighbors in Stoughton whose homes were destroyed by the tornado.  I have a roof over my head and I suppose I should be grateful.

Katrina…  what can I say?  Should I be grateful that my family didn’t dfrown and our home wasn’t washed away?  Perhaps, but I’m not sure empathy and concern translate into that dimension of gratitude.

A couple of weeks ago my friend, a young man maybe forty, felt chipper, felt grand.  Last Tuesday he got sick, felt flu-ful.  Monday he called and asked me to take a meeting for him.  He was still sick, worse in fact, thought it might be pneumonia.   Monday night he went to the emergency room, he felt so bad.  They whisked him off to cardiac intensive care.  It might be a virus, but whatever it is, he’s had a ventricular pump implanted and when he is fully conscious he can begin waiting for a heart.  Mind your manners Harry, this is for real.  I saw him today in the recovery room.  I think he thought I was Ed.  He survived this first high risk surgery and they’ve sent off some tissue to the pathology lab to find out really what ails him.  How can I begin to be grateful I’m not in his shoes?  I don’t have a bunch of school age kids, a working wife, a barn full of animals that need feeding and stalls that need cleaning and eggs that need gathering and turkeys that need shooing off the hood of the car so they don’t make it a huge poopy mess.

Today we were robbed, right about the time I was over at the hospital.  The thief was in his funky Geo Metro trying to leave the premises but he had to wait for Jake who was preceding him out of the driveway on the tractor.  Jake waved, the thief waved back.  The silly twit was carrying several pounds of change from the collection on my dresser.  I think the price of the gas to move that much metal would offset the return.  If you’re paid by the hour to count pennies, how many pennies would you have to count to make it worth your wages?

I have no clue how to place myself in a counterpositional attitude of gratitude as far as the victims of senseless tragedy and straitened circumstances are concerned.   I know for sure that I am grateful I am not the thief in the funky Geo Metro.