A Lesson in Being Thankful for How Things Are as Opposed to How They Could Be

A good friend and I went to visit an old friend and former supervisor of ours this past weekend. "Cliff" was my supervisor at the hotel company worked for up till about 3.5 years ago and was the reason I stayed at the company. When I applied there, my only reason for taking the job was an immediate need for income. I had no intention of staying until I noticed that there was a department that dealt with the company's very high end, exclusive, 5 star hotels. I expressed an interest and within a month, Cliff had me in that department under his supervision. It was because of him that I stayed and that I was given the opportunity to travel to Hawaii (3 times!), New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, London, Amsterdam, Venice and Rome all the while staying for free or very, very cheap at the nicest hotels in the city. The St Regis New York, The St Regis Rome, The St Regis Monarch Beach, The Wigwam, The Sheraton Park Tower, The Westin Europa & Regina, The W New Orleans , the Pulitzer in Amsterdam and on and on. I went places and had experiences that I might never have had otherwise. I certainly have an appreciation for five star hotels that was only refined and expanded as a result of these travels. Motel 6 will never seem sufficient again all thanks to Cliff.

The friend I went with, Claudette, advised me about 3 weeks ago that Cliff, who had returned to Texas after having been in charge of reservations at the luxury resorts the company owned in Tahiti, was in Odessa, Texas and quite ill with AIDS. Cliff is an alcoholic and had never gotten tested for HIV. When he returned to Texas from the South Pacific, he was wildly active in his alcoholism and drug addictions and burned his way through a number of friends with behavior associated with the addiction in a rather short time. He ended up in Odessa living with his mom in a small, one bedroom apartment, broke and now very ill. Left untreated, HIV devastated his immune system and caused him to spend 11 days in the Odessa hospital being treated for infections that come about when one basically has no immunity to opportunistic infections. From staying at and working in the finest hotels in the world, to barely living in a small, dingy apartment in an armpit of a West Texas town.

We took Cliff out for dinner Saturday night and breakfast the next morning. There was some indication that, although he had stopped drinking out of immune system necessity, cocaine was still very much on his menu. Addiction is a ruthless disease and seemingly a small inconvenience like a wasted immune system is hardly an issue when you need to satisfy a craving for coke. It was a disturbing thing to take in.

On the long drive there and back (7 hours each way; if I never go to Odessa again, that would be perfectly fine with me), I had a lot of opportunity to reflect on how similar Cliff's and my paths were yet how different the outcomes. I could very easily have ended up that HIV positive, broke individual waiting on Medicaide and SSI to kick in. It could have been me wiling away the hours on a couch in a small apartment, taking antiretroviral drugs and watching cable tv all day. It could have been me still seeking a chemical high despite having a precarious health situation. It could have been me unable to get real about life. It could have been me.

But it's not me and for this, I'm truly, deeply, humbly grateful.