Saturday, November 28, 2020
Carol and Mark Pugh
Gratitude
When I received Rob’s email asking me to write a Daily Reflection on gratitude, I was filled with, well, a deep sense of gratitude! I have been inspired and encouraged by the essays written by members of the St. John’s family during this trying and troubling year and am grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to the cause.
My husband Mark and I moved to Durham, NH in April 2015 to live closer to my family scattered throughout New Hampshire and Massachusetts. We do not have children of our own, so we were thankful for the opportunity be closer to our many nieces and nephews as they married and started families and to find a home that could be adapted so Mark could continue to do woodworking from his wheelchair. We are grateful for the recommendation of David Knight, the then Priest Associate at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church (our church during the 25 years we lived near Richmond, VA), to consider St. John’s as our new church home. I do not remember David’s exact connection with St. John’s (filling in for a few weeks one summer?), but I am thankful it made such a strong impression on him. Mark’s many health issues meant that we have not able to participate as fully as we would like in the rich offerings at St. John’s, but we are grateful for the sense of joy and community that greeted us whenever we made the drive from Durham to Portsmouth.
Our world turned upside down the morning after the Patriots won the Superbowl in February 2019 (an event for which we are also grateful!). It took a month to get to the root of the problem, but Mark suffered a re-emergence of a 35 year old infection in his left hip (he had bilateral total hip replacements done in 1972, with four revisions to the left hip and two to the right hip between 1985 and 2005). The infection resulted in the need to remove all components of the hip replacement, leaving him without a joint and a much shorter leg. Despite the best efforts of the orthopedics and infectious disease experts at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (for which we were – and still are – filled with gratitude), Mark had four more infection relapses over 12 months, requiring multiple surgeries to clear out the infection. Because of the frequent need to see specialists in Boston, we made the difficult decision to sell our home in Durham and move to Brooksby Village in Peabody, MA in August 2019. We are grateful that the doctors decided to use drains instead of surgery for the last relapse earlier this year. This meant Mark could bypass two to three weeks of inpatient physical rehab and come straight home – he was discharged from the hospital on March 12, 2020! We are very thankful for the pastoral visits Rob, Anne, and Nathan made with us during the times Mark was hospitalized for physical rehab in New Hampshire during 2019. We also have a deep sense of gratitude for their virtual loving support through the many emails we exchanged. It turns out that 2019, our personal annus horribilis, proved to be a great dress rehearsal for the world’s annus horribilis of 2020. We are thankful for the experiences last year that have made dealing with this year a little easier than it might have been.
Mark has been infection free for 8 months and has been feeling better over the past few months, so the coronavirus pandemic inspired need to remain at home to stay safe has been especially hard for him. Being cooped up at Brooksby Village has been a mixed blessing and has caused us to think long and hard about whether we really want to stay here for the rest of our lives. We seriously considered moving to an apartment closer to St. John’s so we could reconnect physically once that was possible. Mark, though, had his heart set on returning to his native Virginia. I reluctantly agreed if we relocated close to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. We will be moving to a wheelchair compatible unit in a brand-new 55+ apartment community in Henrico, VA in mid-March 2021.
Thank you, Rob, for this opportunity to think about how events that seem to be a modern-day retelling of the Book of Job are really an opportunity to experience gratitude.
