Come to think of it,
gratitude is neither the key to success
nor a lock on it
Gratitude is easy when the roof above is Spanish tile, the rug below is silk Tabriz, and your organic bread is buttered with Kerrygold butter. But when life kicks you in the gut, gratitude can gasp and chug, like an engine struggling uphill.
A few months ago, I sat with three friends on one side of a long table in a nursing home’s conference room. Facing us was an array of cordial professionals—nurses, therapists, and business personnel—all nodding and taking notes. Although warmly appointed with abstract art and leafy plastic plants, the room pretended away trace scents of urine tinged with disinfectant and dolloped with the aroma of sautéed onions from the cafeteria across the hall.
At the head of the table, a 30-something social worker named Collette looked up from her laptop and down at my 70-something friend.
“Naomi,” she asked, compunction softening her full lips. “When did you become homeless?”
Without flinching, Naomi sat up, appearing taller than her five-foot frame would suggest. Her bobbed gray hair quivered in sync with the ever-so-slight tremble in her voice.
“I’m not homeless,” she said. “I stay with a friend.”
That friend, Linda, had found the once-vibrant Naomi on the bathroom floor, confused and incapacitated, a month before this meeting. After a week in the hospital, doctors ruled out a stroke, but ruled nothing in. Naomi remained incoherent and wobbly.
Unable to provide medical intervention, the doctors referred Naomi to a nursing home for rehab. Now, three weeks later, her insurance coverage was about to run out. She was going to be discharged. The question was, to where?
Peering through glitzy eyeglasses, Collette bounced her attention between her notes and Naomi. “But I’m reading here that you are homeless.”
“I’m not homeless,” Naomi repeated. “I stay with a friend. I just can’t stay there now.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s an upstairs townhouse. There’s no elevator. And I can’t do the stairs right now.”
“Where did you live before?”
“With another friend.”
“Did you ever have your own place?”
“Of course.”
“Why not now?”
“I ran out of money.”
***
Naomi was living a nightmare shared by thousands of baby boomers.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 20% of people facing homelessness—many for the first time—are 55 and older. That number is projected to triple by 2030. Furthermore, while the elderly comprise 12% of the U.S. population, they account for 18% of all suicides.
In what’s been called a silver tsunami, later-life indigence and its accompanying despair are typically precipitated by a traumatic event. For Naomi, it was a fall. For others, it may be the death of a spouse, a scam, or a natural disaster. Sadly, Naomi’s situation was hardly unique in my circle of friends. At least two other women I’d known most of my life were in similar straits.
Cheri was one of them. She has believed in God, grace, and herbal remedies since I met her in 1973.
“I was always grateful for the smallest things,” she said, reflecting on her life as a minister in the Church of Mystical Healing. Her first sermon was inspired by “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.”
But the magic of gratitude ran out a few years ago when she met and married a man who forged contracts, drained her bank accounts, and then divorced her. She was evicted from the house she had purchased with life savings.
Her belongings were dumped on her front lawn, “like Spanish moss dripping from fragments of my past,” she said. After two months in a cheap hotel, she reached the top of a waiting list for HUD housing. Now she is grateful to sleep on a massage table in an otherwise unfurnished apartment.
Another friend, Anita, was scammed out of her retirement nest egg by a computer geek who promised to fix a wonky hard drive. Trusting to a fault, Anita shared her screen, her password, and ultimately, her life savings. After contemplating suicide, the former executive now lives in subsidized housing. Her gratitude is predicated on the love of her children.
Looking at Naomi and thinking of other friends who were also struggling with dignity, I said a quick prayer.
Thank you, God, that these things did not happen to me.
***
Clearing her throat, Collette summoned my attention back to the present.
“Isn’t there anyone you can live with?” She eyeballed the three of us who sat with Naomi. “Friends? Family?”
We had shown up for this meeting to advocate for a permanent living situation for Naomi, something none of us could provide. We’re all in our 70s, living with defined resources, fixed incomes, and finite quarters.
“She can’t stay with me,” said Linda, shaking her head slowly. “I’m sorry. I really am. But I’m away a lot. What if this happens again?”
Deb, who is on a waiting list for a kidney transplant, was downsizing and had to be ready to leave on a moment’s notice. And I am already a caregiver—my husband has serious health problems. Naomi’s daughter, who wasn’t even here, lives in Anchorage. If Naomi couldn’t handle a flight of stairs, she’d perish in Alaska.
Peeking around Deb, I studied Naomi’s countenance. Quirky—that’s what we called her. That’s what she called herself. Her eyes blinked rhythmically as gears slowly cranked the engine in her brain. First, her thin mouth twitched. Then she held up a hand. Finally, she spoke in an unwavering voice.
“Can I say something?”
“Of course.” Collette’s eyes widened. She planted both palms on the conference table and leaned forward.
“You all have been asking what I can do and can’t do, like I’m not even here,” Naomi began. “But nobody is asking what I want to do.”
We looked at her. She looked at Collette. Collette looked at us.
“I want to get back to normal,” Naomi said. “Nobody can tell me what happened last month. They said it wasn’t a stroke. Okay. So, maybe it was an electrolyte imbalance, a drug interaction, a panic attack, a psychotic break. Maybe it was a series of psychotic breaks. Who knows? But you all know, I was totally incapacitated. And now I’m not. You all know I didn’t ask to be here.” She whiffed. “No one would ask to be here. But since I am here, since I got here, I’ve gotten stronger. See?” She flexed her flaccid biceps. “My blood pressure has stabilized. My weight is almost normal. I’m even doing stairs in PT.”
She was right on all accounts.
“You asked me earlier, Collette, what I had done for a living. I don’t suppose it makes any difference to tell you that I spent my entire life being grateful and working hard. That’s how I made a living. My ex-husband and I lived with no water and no electricity while we flipped rodent-infested houses. I worked at Home Depot. I did landscaping. I’ve never been dependent on anyone for anything. And now, now that I need help, gratitude gets me nowhere. Instead, it’s like a snake that swung around and bit me in the ass.”
Letting that sink in, Naomi turned to us, her friends.
“I’m grateful that you all care about me, that you’re here today. But I don’t want to live here or in a shelter. And I’m not asking any one of you to take care of me. I want to take care of myself. I think I can.”
I think I can. I think I can. The little engine in her brain chugged slowly uphill.
Naomi looked directly at Linda. “Can you give me a chance? Please?”
Caught off guard, Linda chewed her lips.
“You’ll have to be independent,” she finally said. “Climb stairs. Drive. Cook.” She looked around at the nursing home staff, then back to Naomi. “I don’t want to see you live in a place like this. We can try it for a month.”
Naomi then raised her head high, accentuating an aquiline nose and broad forehead.
“Thank you.”
In a comeuppance of gratitude, shame soured my gut. My earlier prayer of gratitude had been premised on self-righteousness—that I was not Naomi.
In standing up for herself, Naomi was the Little Engine that Could. She believed that gratitude is neither the key to success, nor a lock on it; it’s neither a self-fulfilling prophecy, nor a serving of just desserts; and it is neither transferable, nor negotiable.
It is the simple humility of saying I think I can.
Naomi is now taking the stairs—and life—one step at a time. She drives herself to appointments and walks three miles a day. She has resumed a social life that includes Trivia and Rummikub.
And because gratitude has a way of biting you in the ass, her engine stays tuned. She put herself on a few waiting lists for independent living—just in case she needs to chug.
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