Gloria Ferris

Two years ago today I started a journey that not only changed my life, but also the lives of my family and friends. Looking back, it seems hardly possible that two years have passed since that eventful day.  When I woke up in December after spending 20 days in ICU, I could not walk, use my left hand, or stay awake for more than a few hours.

Days, weeks, and months went by and I although some days the steps seemed very small I continued to progress . My amazing friends and family have stuck by me the whole way.The staff at MetroHealth everyone included still tell me at every opportunity that if anyone was going to pull through they thought it would be me because of the wonderful support group that called, visited, and sat by my side during my recovery.

And, that brings me to the perspective  of my post today—friends. Before going further, I want to explain that family are friends and friends are family.  The two have been interchangeable all my life.  My mother fostered that mindset from the time I was small. Since I was an only child, she made sure that I was surrounded by cousins and friends on weekends and in the summer so that I would not become bored and the handful that I could sometimes be.  Ask Tim, he can tell you a few of m “brat” stories as he call them.

When facing a health crisis, I cannot stress enough how important a support system becomes and is.  I am not going to chronicle those important people in this post because I wouldn’t do anyone justice, but I am sure that through the coming years I will write about many of them and those i don’t will know that the reason I do not write  a vignette about them is probably because the connection is cherished in my heart and I feel I do not have the words to properly express the encounter.

Being a friend to someone who is facing a chronic illness can be a challenge, but not if we each realize that one in three of us will face such an illness or be a bystander to someone we love faces the challenges of a health crisis.  Dropping a card in the mail, stopping for a visit at the hospital, taking a meal for everyone to share when the patient comes home , many, many things that take a lot of time or just a smidgen of time can make someone’s day brighter and sunnier.  I know because my days have been much fuller and richer by the random acts of kindness that I have received from friends.

Two years later, they are still supporting me with words of encouragement, conversations over coffee, and including me in projects and decisions they are making so that I can forget my limitations and focus on the possibilities of my life.    

I Received the following from a friend of mine in Brooklyn Centre.  He is right. I have seldom if ever heard Bob speak his political views at a community meeting.  Therefore, I can only surmise that the incident must have been pretty reprehensible for Bob to send this missive to his email list.  I must concur that he is right this political season has had some of the most reprehensible and downright disgusting advertising I have seen in my lifetime.  And, yes, I have turned away and said nothing as so many, but where to start and how to end, but my friend speaks the truth.  We MUST fight back by not succumbing to their intimidation tactics and to use our own words to bring reason and sanity back to our political process.

Bob’s email:

Friends:
I try to limit my political views, but I can only do so to a point. I was at a community meeting earlier this evening where a local public official noted that it’s good we’re going to see "change" during this election. He didn’t clarify however whether he was referring to just county offices (thank god were seeing change there) or to all levels of government. (state and national) Just that we’re "going to see change".

What the hell is going on in this country that so many people are sitting back, accepting and even believing the Republicans, Tea baggers and other right wing extremists as they continue with their distortions and the type of political philosophy that got this county in the economic mess we’re now in? Not to mention their troubling domestic and international policy agendas.

Make no mistake folks, the bulk of the American public lies closer to the middle, despite the efforts of the major media (Plain Dealer included) that naively struggles to bring "balance" to their readership by steering them towards the extreme right. I’m afraid due to their success and the lack of courage on the part of so many others, this country will take a drastic turn for the worse. Please everyone – many of you being public officials yourself – prove me wrong, speak-up and spread the word that we need to stand up to the extremists and stay, and even strengthen the course, before its too late.  
Feel free to forward this message.

Robert H. Gardin
Cleveland, Ohio 44109

My response:

Well said, Bob!  Besides being an educated voter and voting EVERY time, I think that as citizens we need to do what you do Bob and attend these meetings and voice our opinions.  Unfortunately, I see too many people –elected officials, government employees, private citizens who do not express their opinions in public, and therefore, we have no dialogue only demagoguery.  We need to allow for differences of approach and ideas in civic engagement, but too often there is no civility.  I believe we need to embrace freedom of speech and have "true" town hall meetings.  Too often, one side or the other takes the reins and shouts down everyone else, and therefore, our society as a whole is made poorer because we have not been enriched by many ideas and actions, but are governed by only a few, not because the plan was made by using best practices but the loudest. 

My friend Jill Miller Zimon  has been incensed by how many well-qualified women candidates have either been vilified or ignored  by so many citizen and mass media journalists. My apologies for the choice but the title is just so wonderful and it gets readers to where I wanted them to go.   She has also called out Josh Mandel and his ill-disguised attempt to use religious intolerance to capture “voting by fear”. my term not hers.  How sad to see how far we have fallen because of silence.  I am truly blessed to have friends like Bob and Jill.  They keep me centered.

When Monica Robbins interviewed Tim and me a few weeks ago I mentioned that when I spoke at the October Stroke Conference I did three things related my experience,  and shared seven things I learned.  She immediately asked what were they? I of course drew a blank and could only relate five.  I have since found my notes and intend to relate them here over the next few days.

The first thing I learned was to Count My Blessings. Actually, I had learned that years ago when I was a small child, but over the years I had remembered to do it much less frequently. While I was in ICU the nurses would turn on the television for background noise. I don’t know if I listened to the dialogue from “White Christmas”or if I simply dreamed portions of one of my favorite Holiday Classics.

In any case, it reminded me of my father who taught me to “count my blessings”.  When I was much younger I was a “worrywart”.  I worried that my cousin who was in the Navy would get lost in the jungles of Panama, that my teacher would call on me and I wouldn’t know the answer soon enough, that my Dad would go to work one day and not come home again just like my Grandpa, that my mother would get very, very sick. The list was a mile long, and I would stare in the darkness long after the house was quiet with my spinning, worrying mind.

It was shortly after my seventh birthday when my dad walked me into a starlit pasture and told me that I needed to learn to count my blessings instead of chronicle my worries.  That night he showed me how to count on the people who loved me, to count on myself, to count on my strengths, to count on the thousands of stars in the sky. That night I fell asleep confident my blessings outweighed my worries. 

Fifty years later lying in a hospital bed with arms hooked up to too many IVs to count, with a machine to help me breathe,  it would have been easy to have a head spinning full of worries. What if I never walked again, what if I couldn’t use my left hand for eating and writing, what if this and what if that.  I could have spent my hours endlessly worrying, but instead I decided to count my blessings.  It worked. It helped me stay positive on the hardest of days and saw me through long, dark nights.

So just as Bing Crosby sang Irving Berlin’s words to Rosemary Clooney in the movie “White Christmas” so many years ago, I would tell you this Christmas ”when you are worried and cannot sleep try counting your blessings instead of sheep”. It worked for me.

Michele Obama reframed the dialogue yesterday at the reopening of the renovated American Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

“The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there’s free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.”

Hear, hear.

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