TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE by Mitch Albom is the “best selling memoir of all time”. I have just finished reading his latest book, also a memoir, called FINDING CHIKA. Just as Mitch rediscovered his sociology professor, Morrie, by flipping through TV channels, I rediscovered Mitch Albom being interviewed by Anderson Cooper as I was scrolling through CNN’s news highlights on my iPhone. FINDING CHIKA is the story of Mitch and his wife Janine who chose to bring a young Haitian girl to America to find treatment for a rare brain cancer. The memoir shares the choices and challenges experienced by the three of them until Chika’s death at the age of seven.

I found the book heartwarming, inspiring, enlightening and best of all, a reminder of the “attitude of gratitude”.

I quote from page 235: “But none of us are assured of tomorrow. It’s what we do with today that makes an impact. Chika filled every day. She drank it in. She lived it up. And always, always, she affected someone, most often by making them smile. People ask what I learned from this experience. I’ve tried in these pages to lay that out. But I can say one thing above all else. Families are like pieces of art, they can be made from many materials. Sometimes they are from birth, sometimes they are melded, sometimes they are merely time and circumstance mixing together, like eggs being scrambled in a Michigan kitchen. But no matter how a family comes together, and no matter how it comes apart, this is true and will always be true: you cannot lose a child. And we did not lose a child. We were given one. And she was glorious.”

Take time to be thankful, not just on Thanksgiving Day, but everyday, perhaps even twice a day.

-Harriet