“When we focus on our gratitude, the tide of disappointment goes out and the tide of love rushes in.” Coined by Kristin Armstrong of the Happiness Project at UC Berkeley, this aphorism captures the power of appreciation. If you’ve ever kept a gratitude journal or jotted down three wonderful things that happened that day, you’ll recognize gratitude’s ability to reframe even the most difficult circumstances.

I think 2020 qualifies as a time when gratitude has never been more important. It would be all too easy to give in to despair when each day our public health, economic, and political crises seem to intensify. Emotionally, we’ve been through the wringer, and many of us are exhausted. So this Thanksgiving I want to put in a word for gratitude. Not the sunny Hallmark card variety, but gratitude that is earned through life experience. The kind you can’t easily sum up with a happy face.

Tears may be more appropriate. I spent part of the morning comforting a dear friend who just lost her husband of 50 years. When Madeline first answered my call, I literally had no words. So we cried together. She and her husband Bob have been dear friends for almost 20 years. Bob was a loving, generous, smart, irascible guy, and the love of Madeline’s life. There are no words for the hole his death leaves in her heart, or for our shared sorrow. Bob and I used to work The Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle at their dining room table on our visits to their home in LA. Bob and Madeline were at our wedding in 2019, and beloved by my family.

I’m so grateful to be a part of Bob and Madeline’s friendship circle. As fellow bereaved parents – their son Paul died in 1999 – we shared a profound bond knowing we had survived and thrived after unthinkable loss. Madeline and I both published books about the deaths of our children. Her memoir Leaving the Hall Light On is a searing and beautiful account of Paul’s suicide and her journey of recovery.

A half-hour after my call with Madeline, I read a series of messages from the recipient of my daughter Maya’s liver. Patti Frame, another remarkable woman I treasure, wrote to tell me that her six-year-old grandson wanted to know about her transplant. Patti, who spent a career as a special education teacher, is home schooling Connor during the Covid pandemic. He was curious about her scar. As she explained how her operation saved her life, Connor asked question after question about Maya.

Why did she get on the horse? Which part of her head did she hit? Patti told him she would not be here to be his “Babi” without Maya’s donated liver. Then she showed him Maya’s picture.

By this point in the text string I was weeping – again – and so incredibly grateful for Patti’s willingness to share and her vulnerability with her grandson. Seeing Maya made it real for Connor.

“So, so, so thankful for you Ellie – and your brave decision,” Patti wrote.

I’d come full circle. From death to life, from sorrow to joy and gratitude, from loss to the miracle of life’s continuation. I’ve never felt that donating Maya’s organs was truly a decision – it was the inevitable outcome of her life, and of mine; that deepest of loves had to live on.

Patti told me about her Thanksgiving plans, and we ended the conversation just as I had ended my earlier one with Madeline: “I love you” echoing back.

Connor is the fourth generation of Patti’s family to be affected by Maya’s gift: her mother, her husband, her daughter Erin, and now Erin’s older son. It’s a waterfall of love spilling into the future.

Maya is gone. Paul, Madeline’s son is gone. Now Bob is gone too. But we are still here. Gratitude is an invitation to let loss mingle with love, to let the new tide in. So I’m grateful for gratitude, and happy we have a holiday to remind us of its importance in our lives.