I know the holiday itself is a week away, but I haven't been able to avoid thinking about it. I'll explain that in a bit.

    Since last November many of us have experienced some extreme highs and/or lows. Kendall was ill, but appears to be recovering;even getting his voice back (all be it a bit lower than he's used to). Fortunato had a large scare, but it appears that he is going to be allright.

    There has been sickness, recovery, unemployment, found employment, death, birth, and nearly every other sort of sorrow short of locust combined with nearly every other kind of joy short of -- now that I think of it we haven't come up too short at all in the joy department. Hence this thread.

    Specifically, I'm wondering what events or people you point to, since last November, with gratitude?

      I'll begin with the promised explaination.

    My late wife, Patricia, went into the hospital for what turned out to be the last time on November 28,2001 (by absurd coincidence, the exact date of Thanksgiving Day in 2002). She died at 7:10 A.M.CST on January 10, 2002. After that life became a bit volitile. I was unemployed. The day to day buisness of staying alive (I mean this in the strongest possible sense:Where is the rent going to come from? Where is my next meal going to come from?). About once or twice a month one or another of the Temporary Employment Agencies with which I am listed would come up with a week or two of work. Something but not anywhere near enough. But the wolf was to close to the door for me to have the time to work through anything resembling proper grieving.

    Just about the time that I was becoming adjusted to the idea of homellessness and the attractive (at the time) possibility of climbing into a bottle and staying there, I was offered the opportunity to make my first commercial recording. It gave me a renewed sense of purpose. I was still broke, busted, disgusted, and damned lonely, but the opportunity served to remind me that I still had the music. The following months were a flurry of activity. recording sessions and the like. By happy (though, for the sake of scheduling, inconvenient) coincidence, I got a temp job the was to last for a entire month. I was going to have a fighting chance at climbing out of my financial hole. Now if I could just find the time for some solid grieving.

    While all of this was going on, an old and dear friend of mine,Bill Patton, got the opportunity to buy a going buisness -- A bar called The Anchor Inn. Just before my CD eas released in July, Bill decided to seize the opportunity. The deal was closed early in August. He offered me a straight job cleaning the place up. I took it.
It was part time, but it was the first reliable, weekly income I had had since the previous September. I was back in buisness! Five weeks ago I landed a temp job working graveyard shift in an auto parts factory. It is possible that it could turn into a permanent job.

    As of this past Monday I am finally within $50 of being completely caught up with my landlord. By the middle of next month I'll be caught up with the electricity and the phone. Then I will finally be able to finish paying for Pat's last expenses (accent on "EXPENSE"). Best of all i'll be able to get Christmas gifts for my grandchildren without undue sacrifice of my basic living budget.

    As for the grieving and the needed work -- it is being done. I just got a long, rambling e-mail from my younger step-daughter, Angel. It looks like all of this has happened just in the proverbial nick. She does not sound like she's going to have an easy time of it getting through the Holidays. Quite honestly, neither am I, but I'm hoping that in helping her through it I can help myself as well.

    As hard as the year has been I consider myself to be a very lucky man. I am blessed with good friends, a loving family, my music is out before the public as it has never been before (a solo CD and two anthologies), and I was darned happily married for sixteen years.
A lot of people don't have even half of that to point to.

    One other, little thing -- somewhere during all the madness of the last year I, quite by accident, stumbled into a little slice of Heaven called "Mudcat". This forum has become something of a refuge. Sharing your joys and sorrows;your arguments and agreements; the songs, the stories, the brilliant discussions, the pointless bickering, the wonderful jokes, and the rotten jokes has become part of the healing process. it has helped me to adjust,move on with life, and maintain hope. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of it.

Stephen Lee