Gratitude

               Gratitude.

Joan was a happy lady with shoulder-length blond hair and a marvellous smile. Many studies have shown that people who consciously count their blessings tend to be happier and have less depression. They have friends and express more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions.

Since childhood many of us learn to make negative responses to some situations, but that can be ‘unlearnt’ through simple therapy. The negativity can be reversed.

If our responses get to ‘re-form’ more quickly, it can lead to consciously making happier responses to others, and lead to learning to be kind to ourselves as well. Joan began practising making happier responses to others and choosing to see gratitude around her and became much happier.

She had had many losses which led to depression. Her mother had died of breast cancer three years ago, and her father had developed prostate cancer, her best friend had moved overseas, and she was passed over for a rise in salary at her government secretarial job.

Joan had been married but had had no children. After three years of marriage, she had discovered that her husband had been having an affair. She gave him an ultimatum. He chose to leave her. In view of all these setbacks she sought help with a Psychologist. She advised Joan to look at the negatives in her life, and then look at the positive ones. She asked Joan to compete a ‘gratitude diary’.

Joan took up the challenge begrudgingly. Joan had no trouble at all finding a dozen negatives but could only think of a few positive ones. She began by choosing to not live ‘under a dark cloud’, and practised expressing gratitude for all the things in life which were going well for her, and also practised self-compassion.

Joan’s workplace was one of the negative influences in her life. She enjoyed being a receptionist but felt there was too much bickering going on around her. So, she took a big risk and left her government job. Joan could afford to take a few months holiday before she found a new position. She had always wanted to find a job where she could help others, and she saw a position at an alcohol and drug clinic being advertised. She got the job and was welcomed by the other staff members and included in their daily staff meetings. She was very grateful.

Joan quickly observed that all the staff were devoted to their work. One man attracted her immediately. He was the clinic’s Pharmacist, a charismatic movie-star type with white hair touching his collar. Peter dressed in neat black jeans and a pea-green polo-necked jumper and black Skechers.

His job was ‘a breeze’ - just supervising, with a brief glance, the prescription of opiate-replacement drugs methadone, buprenorphine and Buvidal monthly injections. Peter spent a lot of time chatting with any staff member available. He smoked non-stop in a frenetic way - but no-one dared to discuss smoking addiction with him.

Sometimes there was a lull in business and everyone gathered around him, and he always seemed to have many interesting topics of conversation.

Peter was 59 and Joan was 36. They had both been married before, and one of his daughters, who was 33, had just had a baby boy- his first grandchild. In a friendly gesture Joan bought him a ‘congratulations grandfather’ card.

She didn’t notice how Peter looked at her. Because she was new to the job, she didn’t think it strange when he invited her to a barbecue at Woodsman Park on Anzac Day. Joan thought it would be fun to have a day out with all the staff. So, he told her he would pick her up at 8:30, and she was glad she didn’t have to drive herself as she wasn’t sure where to go.

On Anzac Day, at 8:30 Peter arrived. In the next half hour she realised it was just the two of them- no-one else was coming. She felt nervous, because although she had been on a few double-dates with friends, she didn’t regard this as a date, and felt cheated- and Peter was so old. Over twenty years her senior. Nevertheless, she was grateful for the beautiful day, the birds were singing, and the sausages and salad were fantastic.

On the way home he talked about his marriage and the two girls, who were now married, and one of them having just had his first grandson. His marriage had ended, and he was divorced. The only reason that a divorce would be granted, at that time, was on the grounds of adultery. But it was true anyway- Peter was seeing another woman and she had three daughters to him, in their teens and twenties.

Joan lived in Grant Road, in Subiaco, in a unit she was buying, and he asked to come upstairs and see the unit. How naïve she was! Somehow, he persuaded her into bed with him. She was not a virgin but to her he was the Pharmacist at work, not a bedfellow.

He told her sadly about the three daughters he couldn’t see anymore and who were unaware that he was their father, and how he lived a lonely life with his two dogs, in a big old house with a swimming pool that no-one swam in. He went on and on and said he couldn’t cook, and his mother made meals for him and washed and ironed his shirts, and his father cut his hair and cleaned his shoes. His parents were in their 80s and not in good health. They lived near his home, and he often slept there for company. Joan felt sorry for him, He slept at her place several times.

Joan didn’t know how he persuaded her to move in with him and rent out her unit. ‘It made sense… rather than keeping two houses’.

But soon they were engaged and married. Looking upon this as a positive thing in her life, for which she should be grateful, was easy for Joan. She looked at photos of herself as a ‘glowing bride’, and Peter made her feel needed, and for once she had a big house of her own. And Peter was kind, she thought.

She started getting the house in order. It was bizarre that he had cupboards full of children’s outgrown clothes and toys and had collected all his tax returns and paperwork for the past forty years. And a cupboard outside full of empty dog food boxes. Yes, it was very queer. She burned all the papers in the big barbecue and took the toys and clothes to the Samaritans

Soon Joan was pregnant- a beautiful daughter, and two years later a wonderful son.

This fairy tale could have ended ‘and they lived happily ever after’, but it did not. Peter’s many years of heavy smoking caused lung cancer, which killed him. The children were 6 and 8 and really didn’t miss him because he had not worked since he and Joan got married, and was always out, at golf, or bowls, or Bridge or at the casino. The children were with Joan all the time they were not at school. She worked at a construction company during school hours. Peter used to come home for tea, sometimes, then either going out to Bridge or the casino. Sometimes he never came home at all.

Yes, Joan and her fatherless children lived happily ever after- and she was very grateful for that.