Pollyanna Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

The cold steel of the table pressed against my back through the thin crepe cotton blanket. Voices spoke over me to each other. Clinical. Cold. A nurse held my hand and I screamed when I felt the blood trickle down my side and the ache in stretched skin pulled from an old scar.

I opened my eyes and pressed them tight again. The sedative I’d assumed I’d been given had worn off and then I learned the wicked truth. Only Lidocain had been sprayed where the surgeon would be working, and I woke to the clatter of surgical tools, voices, and warm blood. This was my pacemaker operation. And I was lucky. It almost didn’t happen at all.

Three open heart surgeries from the age of four. Now, I’m in my forties with a life sentence of a new pacemaker every seven years. The fifth one at thirty-nine was both one of the scariest moments in my life and the one where I learned what I was truly made of. It was also the year I learned about the power of faith and friends in a foreign country.

Our friends are family we choose and in a foreign country it is imperative to build. But, I don’t want to discount the Head of Cardiology I met who just happened to be a Boston Fellow. Who just happened to hear my story only thirty minutes after I’d been turned away from the hospital for not having the right insurance. Yes, this was a foreign country and had I been a citizen or long-term residence working for a business, I would have been taken care of no matter where I went. But, things don’t always work out exactly the way we imagine them. And sometimes, they turn out better.

And this same doctor, called me to come back. We worked out a payment plan and he performed the surgery himself just hours before he was supposed to leave for Boston the next day. I was lucky.

An Optimism That Doesn’t Shatter

I am an eternal optimist. I have to be. It’s how I’ve gotten through three open heart surgeries and five pacemaker implants to date. It’s how I’ve taken the time to travel and explore whenever I can. It’s what keeps a smile on my face no matter how dire the situation. I am happy because I have to be. I need to be. It’s how I survive.

In that same foreign country, I was invited to an American friend’s wedding. She was on the hunt for the perfect wedding shoes. But, the ceremony would only include the bride and groom, their parents, and their respective witnesses. In all, about six people. The real celebration with more family and friends would be the reception – where I knew she’d take her shoes off to dance.

Frustrated she couldn’t find the right white, she asked how I remained so calm. I told her it was because I’d learned long ago, that there was more to life than shoes and weddings – these were blips on the radar of the bigger picture. Life. A life I was glad to be immersed in.

I used to wonder what my purpose was. Why I was still here and then last year, I came nearer the answer than ever before.

The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t

Last year, I met the opposite of me. Someone who could not or did not want to see the silver lining in the clouds or find the golden nuggets in the darkness. Admittedly, this person’s life had been fraught with hardship and difficulties, but from the stories she told nothing culminated until her move to the United States. Every decision had ended badly. Like she got stuck in a cycle and didn’t know it. And if she did know it, had no inclination to get out of it.

But, at the holidays, a time when emotions already run high, her memories overtook her. She let them drag her down and keep her there. And, this is the year I truly learned the meaning of “misery loves company.”

On Christmas morning, I wasn’t met with “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas” or even “Good morning.” I was met with, “this is a terrible time for me. Two people I loved dearly died.” My family and I would learn later, throughout the day and over the course of three Christmas movies unwatched and unheard, it had all happened over five years before.

We reached out and offered positive encouragement. We talked. We offered understanding and condolences. And that is when I learned, some people simply want to live in their own reality – good or bad.

This Christmas morning will live in infamy as the Christmas that almost wasn’t because as a Pollyanna, eternal optimist, Christmas is where I want to shine. To decorate, to be happy and share good spirit. To show good things can happen. But, this wasn’t to be. Not this day.

Lessons Learned Along Life’s Winding Path

It is said, people come into your life for a time and for various reasons – to teach us something at each meeting. So, I wondered what this lesson might contain.

My Christmas spirit had evaporated. But, now, as I look to the next holiday, I wonder if something we said sank in deeply and is coming to the surface in her psyche. She’s now moved on to another location. Another place believing she’d be happier. I hope so.

I can’t help but want to wish her well and hope she’s found joy in life. If she was happy once, I hope she can find it again, even late in life. After all, Pollyanna’s efforts with Mrs. Snow were fruitful in the end.

For a long while, I wondered if I’d recover from the “negative Nancy” person I’d worked so hard to be a Pollyanna to. I would get frustrated and angry at her attitudes and words and generalizations about people and places I loved.

There were too many times to count in which I’d have to explain, like I did to my friend with the wedding shoes, why I believed life could be better.

There were too many times to count where I called upon the faith which had seen me through each new chance at life over the course of those heart surgeries and a childhood of hospitals and doctor’s offices.

I could sympathize and I could empathize, but somehow I felt I had moved on. But, maybe that was my lesson.

To put myself in someone else’s shoes, if only for a time, and experience what life might be like if Pollyanna didn’t live here anymore.

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