Dear A-Letter Reader:

I don't usually get too personal in these A-Letter Comments that I've been writing now for almost a decade. But on this Thanksgiving Day 2006, I have special reason to give thanks.

On the morning of October 20th I awoke, ready to fly off to Panama to speak at an International Living meeting. Within minutes of waking I discovered I was suffering from massive intestinal bleeding. Within an hour or so, as directed by my family physician, I was in the emergency room of a local hospital. On Sunday the 22nd I had a major proportion of my intestines removed. Thank God, it was not cancer, but rather a weakness in the colon wall that sometimes affects older folks like me.

Now I am feeling better each day. Convalescence takes time, up to two months in my case, although I was in the hospital only 10 days. But it was the first time that I had spent even one night in the hospital in 65 years. (The last time was in 1941 when I was four years old and had my tonsils removed).

When such an event occurs, it forces one to take stock in many areas of life. Statistics show that one my age (69) can, on average, expect to live another 16 years, all things being equal. So my surprise surgical event made me think about what I wanted to do with those remaining potential years: what I need to change, what is, and should be, important to me at this juncture in my life.

Thanksgiving's underlying idea is that existence, life itself, is a gift.

I have always been a strong supporter of the right to life, but this is the first time that my own existence was called into question (although I have been through a few close calls). At one point, three of my four children, (my oldest son lives in South Africa), left their own families and flew in to see me through the worst of my hospital stay. My friends and coworkers flooded me with get-well cards and flowers and visited me in hospital. Indeed, an event such as this is a true measure of friendship. When times get really hard, one discovers one's true friends. When I was a member of the U.S. Congress, everybody was my friend. When I was not re-elected, the exodus of "friends" was large and swift.

As Boston Globe writer, James Carroll, suggested in a 2004 column, many people are ill this Thanksgiving, "bearing the effects of stroke or recuperating from an operation, or clinging to what strength has outlasted the chemotherapy. Yet they are the ones who tell their healthy friends and relatives how precious life is every day, every hour, every minute. Some families are broken, many people are alone, beloved ones are missing -- a holiday that celebrates intimacy can make its absence painful."

As he wrote: "Idealized observances, so different from the real, can weigh too much. No one lives forever. Human beings are constitutionally incapable of consistent generosity. Every person has reason to feel regret. Yet directly facing such difficult facts of the human condition can be a relief, because they inherently suggest their counter facts.
Even the tragic aspect of experience, that is, can open to the primal mystery on which all else rests, and Thanksgiving dares to affirm that mystery as benign." Thanksgiving reminds us that life is good.

A well known twelve step program suggests that one major factor in recovery from addiction is an attitude of gratefulness. Gratitude defines us at our best. It does this by pointing away from self toward others, or toward a higher power some of us choose to call God. I have many reasons this holiday to be grateful and I am.

So count your blessings this Thanksgiving and be grateful. That's what I'm doing.

That's the way that it looks from here,
BOB BAUMAN, Editor

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