THE VALUE OF GRATITUDE

Happy Holidays! Please enjoy a repost of “The Value of Gratitude” for this holiday season. On a Christmas Eve when nothing is going as originally planned, I am reminding myself of all the things I have to be incredibly grateful for.

“This is a wonderful day I’ve never seen this one before.” Maya Angelou

In the early morning of January 15, 2004, a heavy snowstorm blew through central New Jersey.  Six months pregnant with our first son I laid restless in bed while listening to the howling wind outside of our 3-bedroom ranch home.  The baby boy that I was carrying had the hiccups and every minute or so my stomach would pop out with a violent shake. To fall back asleep, I started to count the seconds in between every hiccup hoping the counting would benefit me as much as counting sheep did when I was a child.   In between a hiccup and at the number twenty-three, the house phone rang around 5:00 AM. My husband answered quickly as we both knew exactly what this call meant.

For years, my mother had been fighting a rare liver disease.  Primary Biliary Cirrhosis treated my mom’s liver like a foreign entity.  PBC had caused Mom’s immune system to attack and methodically destroy her liver.  The body’s one and only liver which is absolutely required to live.  Diagnosed when I was a teenager, my mom bravely fought the disease for over 10 years before she was put on a transplant list at Albert Einstein hospital in Philadelphia.  For the past 14 months she had been living with my aunt in Princeton so that Mom could be within the required distance to be registered at such a prestigious transplant hospital. My dad continued to work and live in Louisville, KY (glued to his cell phone) while day in and day out we all waited for that lifesaving call.  Over the last 14 months, mom had been called into the transplant center four separate times as a “backup”.  If the primary recipient was unable to accept the organ, then the backup was always prepped and ready to go so as to not waist one precious gift of life.  Four separate times we waited for hours in a hospital room all together, only to be told that the primary recipient had received the organ.  Every time was a painful mix of happiness for the recipient and their family as well as grief for the donor family and for our family as well.

As my mom’s disease progressed, we were informed at the beginning of January that she would only have a few months left to live without a transplant.  She was moved up the UNOS list but there was nothing we could do except wait and pray.  Knowing that I could lose my mom around the same time I was giving birth to my son was a pain that no mother-to-be should ever have to contemplate.  At the same time, I was a sales manager for Hormel Foods and trying to financially assist with our growing pile of household bills.

The call this morning was different.  My mom proceeded to inform my husband that she was the primary and that they were in the car on the way to the hospital in the snowstorm.  The organ was originally meant to be transplanted into a patient in New York, but complications had prevented the transfer and the back up in New York spiked a fever.  They were transporting the organ to Philadelphia with only a few hours left on the ticking clock of a live organ.  My mom was the last chance that this liver would have to save a life before it expired.

My husband and I quickly gathered our things, at this point we had “transplant hospital” bags ready to go instead of the traditional “labor and delivery” bags.  I hobbled into the car as we began the nearly 90-mile white knuckle drive to Philadelphia.  Stopping to pick up my sister along the way, about an hour into our drive, my mom called to say goodbye.  They were taking her in for transplant immediately and if she did not make it through, she wanted to say goodbye and tell us she loved us both very, very much.  Six months pregnant, saying goodbye to your mom on the phone for what might be forever as you drive through a treacherous snowstorm on an abandoned highway is never a good feeling.

Emotionally distraught and unable to complete a full sentence, my next phone call was to my manager at the time.  We had meetings planned for that day which I obviously was not going to make, and it was highly likely I would not be making it into the office for a couple of days to come, no matter what happened in that operating room.  I do not remember a whole lot about what was said on that call but what I will never forget was his instant reply, “Take care of yourself, take care of your family, I will take care of everything at work… for as long as you need.”  The sense of relief I felt as I hung up from that call was something I needed in that very moment.  It was the knowing that my boss had my back and cared enough about me as a person to remove at least the burden of work for the time being.

Many weeks following the successful transplant, my work hours were inconsistent.  What was normally an 8 to 5 desk job in an office became on and off hours at my mom’s bedside.  I did what I could and somehow the rest got handled when I was not looking.  A couple of months later, my manager would be promoted to another division of the company, and I would assume his position when I returned from maternity leave.  The kindness and understanding that was gifted to me at that time would forever stay with me.  A few years later when he offered me a role at another company, I eventually accepted.  Partially because it was what I needed at the time, but even more so because I was grateful.  Grateful to know that I could work hard to return the favor.  As the years went by, when he needed extra dedication and effort from me, I would have his back as well.

My own experience has always shaped how I care for my employees.  I have their back.  Besides just being the good human thing to do, it results in employees that are loyal, dedicated and will give 110% when the need arises. 

Managing in the Middle:

• Supporting employees behind the scenes in their time of need can be the difference between a grateful, loyal employee and a forever resentful one.
• When an emergency or tragic event occurs, the very first and most helpful thing you can do is to remove the burden of work.
• Go a step further and request IT to generate an out of office email for your employee if necessary, directing inquiries to you for triaging requests.
• The good human thing to do is to care and to help, the professional benefit of doing so will come full circle for years down the line.

18 years later my mom is still healthy and enjoying her amazing gift of life with her now three grandchildren.