Surprised by gratitude (Day 7 of 10 Days of Gratitude)

This is Japhia's story.  I saw it; she lived it.

It was one of the sick days, about two-thirds of the way along a downward slide towards re-admission to the hospital.  It was early evening -- around 7, approaching spring-time sundown when she'd had enough of trying to be well and up -- "up" for much of the day meaning sitting or lying on the couch and not being sick.

She went to bed and was listening to a few chapters of a favourite novel.  She was hoping for the soon relief of sleep, when all of a sudden from outside the bedroom window, down on the street below, there arose such a clatter from all around the neighbourhood of pots and pans being banged and struck.

"What's that noise?" she wondered.

I looked at the clock.  "It's 7:30.  It's people out on the street thanking all the health-care workers.  For their work in the pandemic."

Pause.

"Every night at 7:30 people go out and bang pots to say thanks.  For all that the workers are doing for people, and the risks they're ta..."

She was already out of bed with more energy than she'd felt for days.  Saying only "I have to go out there," she threw on her housecoat, found her slippers and was on her way downstairs.  Within seconds we were on the front step adding the sound of our cookware to the general clatter around us.  

Some of us were giving broad thanks to a general, anonymous category of people we know as "health-care workers."  Others, like Japhia, had in mind and in heart all the nurses and paramedics and doctors who have cared for her along the way, as well as her daughter and daughter-in-law whom she admires and worries about as they go to work these days as personal support workers.

The next morning she reflected on the night before.  Wondered about her sudden and seeming recovery.  Felt a residue of the energy still in her.  

The slide downward soon resumed, though.  Less than two days later she was re-admitted to the hospital for another stretch of treatment, observation and gradual weaning back to relative health.

But the gratitude remains.  

For the health-care workers.  

And for the opportunity to be so unexpectedly caught up into such a free and open expression of deep-felt gratefulness.  

And for the healing generated for a moment by that sudden, unfettered, un-measured outflow of gratitude for people who have cared for her that, as we all know, is always both deeper and higher than we can ever put into just words.