Happy Thanksgiving

Since it's Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday because there are no presents to buy and the menu is preset), I think I can get a little sappy in this entry. So here goes.

When I count my blessings, it's hard to know where to begin…so I think I'll start with you all. It has meant so much to me during these four months to know you're all thinking of, praying for, and wishing me well. Without all the cards, emails, calls, visits, delicious meals, presents, and maybe most of all hugs and kisses, I know that I would not be doing as well as I am. Thank you, thank you, and thank you again.

I had chemo treatment number five last Thursday (I know I'm late with this missive). Then on Friday I had a short, but wonderful visit with Susan Lindsay, who was my maid of honor forty-two years ago. She came to South Bend from Jackson, MS, with her son who was speaking to a group at Notre Dame, just so she could see me. It has probably been more than twenty years between face-to-face encounters, so it was very special. We went to lunch at the Bistro at the Morris Performing Arts Center so I could show her what I spent twelve years of my life working on. She, too, thought it was worth the time and effort.

When I arrived home I thought I needed a nap. Two and a half hours later I woke up to realize I had missed my appointment for the post-chemo injection I was to get, and as result didn't get the CA125 number until Monday. It is a great one though – 8.7 to be exact. So those toxic chemicals are really doing their job. Who knows, maybe I will get to zero.


Now I want to add part of a commentary from USA Today written by Alcestis "Cooky" Oberg about what we have to be grateful for. But first I need to say that this absolutely does not mean I'm in any way giving my family short shrift because I love and need them everyday, but I have some outstanding friends.

On Thanksgiving, families gather together and express gratitude for the bounty in their lives.

But what is a family these days? Of course, it's parents, children and siblings — blood relatives. But with American families becoming so mobile, so scattered and so displaced, many people form close family-like attachments to friends, making them siblings by choice, brothers and sisters of life.

Perhaps this year, the prosperity we celebrate at Thanksgiving should not only be for the material riches of our lives but also for the human ones. After all, the bounty of living may not just be the abundance of goods spilling out of the cornucopia of life, but the richness of the relationships we have cultivated and harvested in our lifetime.

In recent studies, scientists have found that close friendships are very important factors to our health. In a longevity study in Australia, researchers found that a network of good friends was more important than family and economic prosperity in increasing the length of a person's life, especially among the aged. Friends help each other weather the vicissitudes of life — death of spouses, bouts of poor health, and so on. Other studies have indicated that friends reduce stress and provide emotional support through inevitable ups and downs.

Everyone has gathered best friends — an old school chum here, a trusted colleague from work there, or some wonderful person met by pure happenstance. These friends are people we can confide in, speak our hearts to — and to whom we listen intently for solace, inspiration and advice. They are our chosen family — the brothers and sisters of our souls — who clarify and define who we are, what we are doing. And these friendships never change: To speak after a decade's separation is the same as speaking just yesterday, time and distance rendered meaningless in our life journey together.

When we sit down to our feast of Thanksgiving this year, we should give thanks for that other family, that chosen family — our human harvest of enduring friendships. And they're easy to name, too. They're the ones who made a difference. "No love, no friendship," wrote Nobel Prize winner Francois Mauriac, "can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever."

I hope that all of you have as meaningful a Thanksgiving as I do. My list of blessings this year goes on and on.