A few years ago, I wrote a Thanksgiving Day column for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It got a good response. My favorite came from one of my former partners (now an adjunct here) who is a former naval officer. He told me that, on Thanksgiving, he orders his family to listen while he reads it to them.
I doubt that is true, but, if you know the man, the image is priceless and, for those of us who were litigators at Foley & Lardner during the eighties and nineties, evocative of many warm memories.
In any event, I reprise the column each Thanksgiving on my personal blog. Think of it as my low rent version of “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
The Virtue of Gratitude
By Rick Esenberg
Posted: Nov. 23, 2005
A bit over five years ago while shopping with my wife at Bayshore Mall, I suddenly felt as if I couldn’t breathe. My face lost significant color. For someone as white as I am, that is no mean feat. It must have been hard to tell.
I found myself, some 30 minutes later, in the emergency room. My wife (a registered nurse) and her brother (a radiologist) stood together, reading my EKG and looking as if Brett Favre had announced his retirement.
They tried to tell me everything was OK.
Obviously lying. I made a mental note that someday I would get each of them into a game of high-stakes poker.
I was having, as they say, “The Big One.” It turns out that I needed a quadruple bypass, a procedure that had to be done so urgently that I bumped an 89-year-old from the operating room because he was “more stable” than I was. That added insult to injury.
I came closer than most 44-year-olds to buying the farm, yet I remember one overriding thought during the ordeal.
It was “thank you.”
I had never noticed that our local airport has labeled the post-security-checkpoint area the “recombobulation area.” I hope any of you traveling through airports over the holiday are discombobulated as little as possible, and recombobulated easily and peacefully. Indeed, I wish everyone safe travels in general. And, come to think of it, peaceful recombobulations in general; sometimes the holidays can be a bit discombobulating whether or not you are traveling.