Gratitude

This afternoon I turned off my phone, turned up the music, plugged in my ear buds,
and began to write this column about gratitude.  When I opened the door to take
Will outside, this is what I found.  And that's what this column is about. Thank you.

A missing toe.  Two broken ears. Eyes that see little more than shapes and shadows.  Bad hips.  A chemotherapy needle.  All things to be grateful for, at least in our world. 

I’ve come to believe that wherever we are, whatever we are facing – we are right where we are supposed to be.  There’s no controlling outside influences but what we can do is decide how we want to see them. 

When fifteen year old Will was discarded with his bad hips, eyes, and ears at a kill shelter his life must have seemed over to him.  The only family he’d ever known let him down.  Rumor has it they grew too old to take care of him, but when he arrived in our lives my first thought was they must have been too old to take care of him from day one because he was in such sorry shape and pain.  On the first day Atticus and I took him in, he bit me several times.  He’d keep this up for a couple of months.  Always growling.  Always snarling.  Always fearful.  Never trusting. 

Early this past summer Atticus was struggling with a toe injury. We thought he caught his nail on something and it ripped away from the nail bed.  Two weeks passed, the toe worsened, eventually it abscessed.  We moved quickly and it was amputated.  Biopsy results showed cancer, but it looked as though we got it all.  Later tests revealed it had been moving so rapidly we took a proactive stance and started chemotherapy, with the idea that it’s easier to fight cancer cells when they are just forming than playing catch up with one of life’s greatest thieves.

Will hadn’t been here very long before I notice that with all his faulty senses, he loved smelling the wildflowers in our yard.  So I started to court him. Once a week I bought him flowers.  He’d sniff them repeatedly and seemed to find peace. Occasionally, I’d put them next to his head when he was napping and when awakened he’d inhale, seemed to sigh, and then lay his head back on them and went back to sleep. 

When I told this story on our blog and Following Atticus Facebook page this past spring a most unusual thing happened.  A once-discarded, broken, and angry dog started receiving flowers – from all around the world!  In the past several months more than a hundred bouquets have come in for him from people he’s never met but have read his story and want him to be happy.

The day we decided to amputate Atticus’s toe, I also announced it on our blog and Facebook page.  I would later learn that the phone at North Country Animal Hospital started ringing and a day later more than $2,000 had come in from donations – once again from all over the world.  (The donations covered the surgery and the first three chemo treatments, only now have I started paying for Atticus’s medical bills with my own money.  This not only stunned me and the staff at North Country Animal Hospital, it humbled us and brought tears to many an eye.) 

Strangely, as Will gets older and creeps closer to death, he’s more content than ever.  Strangely, when Atticus’s cancer arrived it, I spent a few minutes to break down, then became strong again, as you do for a good friend, and the strength between us grew just as it had on all those winter peaks we climbed together in both the best and worst of conditions.  We’d been challenged before.  We had this, no matter the outcome. We were right where we belonged.  Most importantly we were together…come what may. 

All of his had me thinking of nothing but how fortunate we all are.  Sure, Atticus and I had been kept off the trails for months and away from what we love.  And Will, I imagine, will soon be gone because ailments come and go and seem more serious as of late, but in the seventeen months he’s lived with us he’s grown to love and allow himself to be loved and he’s truly become a pleasure to have around. 

At another time in my life even the smallest misfortune would have upset the apple cart and yet here I found myself smiling through what would have crippled me in the past.  I kept counting my blessings.  Numerous people sent me cards, letters, and emails talking of mourning and expressing how sad they were for the three of us and telling me they knew how I felt.  But even though they were being kind, they had no idea how I felt, for I wasn’t and I’m not mourning the eventual loss of Will.  How can I not celebrate seventeen months when I thought we’d have but two with a thankless and angry old dog?  Nor am I fearing cancer.  I figure if anyone should have to dance with that despicable disease, it’s Atticus and me, because we’re built for it. 

In spite of the darkness I’ve held onto the stars: two good souls and the support of thousands of people, most of whom we’d never met.  The challenges Atticus, Will, and I face are ours to climb, but we’re doing it with a safety net of kindness, prayers, and the most powerful love I’ve ever witnessed. 

How do you say thank you to something like that?  I decided to give the one thing we most appreciate in life, the one gift we cherish more than any other.  So it was announced that Atticus and I, famed for hiking on our own accept for the rarest of occasions, would take twelve Facebook followers on a hike.  I figured we’d get fifty requests to join us  but within three days we were flooded with 1,500 requests to follow Atticus.  So instead of a dozen, we decided on twenty-three people from around the country.

They started arriving in our hometown of Jackson today.  California, Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine are all represented on what we’re calling the Following Atticus Gratitude Hike.  We have an eleven-year-old, one in his twenties, two in their thirties, four in their sixties, the remaining fifteen in their forties and fifties.  These individuals, the vast majority of, we have never met even in passing, will do something we don’t even do with our friends.  They’ll hike with us and we’ll share with them the glory of New Hampshire’s stunning White Mountains.  Most are not hikers, but that’s okay.  We weren’t hikers at one point either. 

These are twenty-three very different folks.  A few couples are in the mix, one father and daughter team, a mother and daughter as well, but twenty-three individuals.  What they have in common is that they’ve been following a little black and white dog over mountains, down into valleys, under the brightest of lights, and through the darkest of times.  They’ve also fallen for old, broken down Will.  Some see him as their personal hero.  I’ve heard from several: “If Will can survive all he’s been through, I can survive what I’m barely enduring.” 

Atticus is doing well half way through his chemotherapy.  Will, although faltering here and there, is doing well in the last chapter of his life.  That brings us to me.  And here’s how I feel – grateful.  I am grateful for what the three of us share in good and rough times.  I wake up saying prayers expressing that gratitude and every day is Thanksgiving for there is always something to be thankful for.  I’m grateful that we are together.  I’m grateful we have started hiking again on the better days, albeit it short hikes.  I’m grateful that people care enough about Atticus and Will to send flowers and cards and handmade quilts.  And I’m grateful that Atticus, Will, and I are all where we are supposed to be. 

On Saturday morning we’ll have breakfast with this crew and after we drop Will off with a dear friend for a day of care and comfort, the rest of us will head to a mountain and Atticus and I will show our thanks on the summit as we always have.  But this time we’ll also be thanking twenty-three people who represent thousands upon thousands of others who care and invest their hearts and thoughts in every step of our journey.

Today as we were driving down the road from our house, just two miles away, I found it fitting that we were passing Storyland, as we do every day.  Because life is indeed a fairytale, if only we choose to see it that way.  And that's what I've learned to do. 

In a dysfunctional world where religious fanatics use bombs to kill people in the name of God, where those who are supposed to represent us in government make fools of themselves and glorify their own egos, where broken people kill school children or employees at shipyards, where we pollute and smother the air and water and earth we need for life, and animals are abused out of both cruelty and ignorance, I count my blessings.  Among those blessings are the following. A missing toe.  Two broken ears. Eyes that see little more than shapes and shadows.  Bad hips.  A chemotherapy needle. 

And two little dogs who are great souls.