Things to Be Thankful for in 2009: My Life, My Wife and Her Friend

This article asks the simple question, "What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?" There's a lot I can say I am thankful for - it all makes great copy and it's all true - but the real truth is far more prosaic. I'm thankful for: my life, my wife and her friend.

I am honestly not well man. However, I try to remain as happy as a man facing the need for 42 pills just to stand up can be. Every day for the last 25 years, I have had to take up to 42 or more pills to remain upright.

I'm not going to bore you with a litany of my ills, however, I will say that when you've looked over the edge of the abyss and survived, you appreciate every day that's given to you -- you realize just how wonderful that day is and how thankful you are to have it.

It makes you realize just how you take your time on earth for granted and how all of the things we think are important, are just so much baggage.

You perspective changes radically as you lay on a hospital gurney half in-half out, seeing a brain team srubbed and ready and hearing your very frightened young wife -- at the time -- being told to brace herself because she might be a widow by morning.

That, my friends, is your wake-up call, it was mine. You can tell the people with the degrees were wrong -- my family doctor found the cure and he's "just a humble GP."

I walked out of the hospital three weeks later on my own determined to live life to the fullest with my wife.

And this brings me to my wife. She's still here (what strange powers love has over us) 25 years later. She has been by my side steadfastly through all of this, knowing her dreams of family and home were going out the window because of my ills. She could have gone; found a new husband; had the kids she and I had wanted, but she chose to stick it out. Now that's real love and it is something to be thankful for. I only hope you find it yourself.

She is here; she could have gone and had a "normal" life, but she stayed and has put up with stresses that would make any woman's knees sag. Yet, she's borne each disappointment, each visit to the ER with an inner strength that few could match.

She's funny, too, because she thinks she's a weak person, but, to have put up with what she's had to put up with and to nurse me back to health, shows me there's iron under that gentle demeanor. She's a rock of strength who doesn't know it and I would be drifting aimlessly -- if I had survived at all, which, of course, I did -- without my tiny wife to not only provide me anchorage, but always show me the true way through a problem.

My wife is not only my wife, she's also my best friend and lover and I am thankful she is.

And, then there's my wife's friend who came forward, when others didn't, offered us some kindness that we took and our car stayed on the road. A giving person, we have to be thankful for her presence in our life, though my wife, because she has been there for us when we needed it. Her selflessness is a reason to be thankful for her to be in our life.