Thanksgiving

Yesterday I stumbled upon a Gone with Wind marathon on AMC.  I love this movie and I love, love the book!  I have read it several times enjoying it more each time.  I have always admired Scarlett O’Hara’s strength, determination and her unrelenting Hope.  Though Rhett Butler delivers the most popular line in the movie, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” it is not my favorite.  I love the very last line delivered by Scarlett O’Hara, as she watches Rhett Butler walk away and wiping away her tears she ends the book/movie by saying, "After all, tomorrow is another day!"

As I watched the end of the movie yesterday, this last line got me thinking.  Thinking about tomorrow … thinking about Thanksgiving … thinking about how thankful I am that indeed tomorrow is another day and Ben will be there to celebrate it with us.

Today, as we sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, we will measure serving sizes, count carbs and give Ben his bolus, and my heart will be filled with gratitude.  I am thankful for this clear magical liquid with the very distinctive smell of band-aids which has overtaken the butter compartment in my refrigerator and keeps my youngest son (my baby) alive.  Ben is able to sit with us at our family table and share this Thanksgiving dinner because we have insulin.

I am thankful for Canada, the University of Toronto, the bright ideas of Dr. Fredrick Banting and Charles Best, for the brave young kids that participated in the early human trials, and for Eli Lilly who worked so hard to mass produce the new life-saving drug.

I am also thankful for all the men and women, whose names I yet do not know, who are working diligently to find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes.  Because like Scarlett O’Hara, I have Hope too.  Hope that one day a cure will be discovered.  And one day, one Thanksgiving, we will be thanking a new list of scientists and doctors who cured diabetes mellitus, insulin-dependent, Type 1 Diabetes.  But until that day comes I will be thankful for each and every day in between, because “After all, tomorrow is another day!”  And every one of those days is a gift.