OPINION:
A few weeks ago, my older son was working tirelessly on what for him was a challenging high school English assignment, one that required him to write a journal entry about a meaningful moment in his life.
My son understood the composition was supposed to be a stream-of-consciousness, pen-to-paper undertaking. But instead he spent a lot of time contemplating the assignment, deliberating on his theme and choosing his words so carefully that he was tardy in turning in his work.
He chose to write about that traumatic day four-and-a-half years ago that I spent at the hospice facility where his mother, my wife Kim, had just taken her last breaths after a courageous four-year fight against cancer.
I regularly brought our children to visit Kim during the three months she spent in hospice.
But on that day, I had gone to see Kim alone because I wanted to spare them a lasting image of their mom lying comatose and unresponsive in her bed.
I arrived home late in the afternoon and gathered my sons on the front steps of our townhouse to tell them of their mother’s passing.
Sitting between them and holding them tightly with one arm wrapped around each of them, all I had the strength to say was that mom and I loved them very much and I would take care of them. As we sobbed together, I remember saying, “I’m sorry.”
My 8-year-old son spoke no words. He just cried into my neck as he squeezed his head into my shoulder. But my older son, then 11, in between crying and hugging me, talked about how much he loved his mom, that he would always remember her and keep her close to his heart and in his soul. We sat there for an hour, the three of us, grieving together as the sun was setting before our eyes.
That was the essence of the dialogue my older son wrote in his journal. And he expressed his conviction with the perspective and wisdom time grants us, that he had learned we should try our best to live life in the moment while appreciating the special but finite time we have together on this earth with our loved ones.
I am still devastated over losing Kim before her 42nd birthday.
And I am angry at the ghastly cancer for taking her from me and our boys whom she loved so much. My heart is forever broken over my sons never being able to see their mom cheering them on at basketball and soccer games, swim meets, band concerts and school graduations.
And yet, my overriding emotion is still one of gratitude. I am deeply grateful Kim and I met and fell in love in the most unlikely of circumstances at the CIA, traveled the world together, and were blessed with two children who remind me everyday that the best thing I did for them was to marry their mom.
Kim and I had been living in the moment since we met. And so had the rest of our family.
There was no one more supportive than my late father of my CIA career, which on more than a few occasions put me in harm’s way.
Dad’s college classmate was the late CIA senior officer Richard Welch, whom the Greek terrorist group November 17 assassinated in front of his home in Athens, where he was serving as chief of station in 1975.
I’m sure my dad worried plenty about me in private but he never revealed anything to me. His joy upon my return from each assignment, most especially my last one because I had been deployed to a war zone in South Asia for almost two years, was limitless. Dad passed away 10 months later, but not before we shared one last Thanksgiving, a round of birthdays and holiday season together.
American essayist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.”
Too often we gather as family and friends to console one another in times of grief. It’s during those all too rare occasions, as we celebrate what binds us together while our hearts are uplifted with joy, when we bow our heads in grateful recognition of our glorious but ephemeral time together.
Thanksgiving dinner, family, and football — that’s what living in the moment is all about.
And for all that on this Thanksgiving holiday, my sons and I will be expressing our deepest gratitude.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. He can be reached at danielhoffman@yahoo.com.
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