Getting Ready to Give Thanks

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It's always been my favorite holiday.

When I was younger it was the holiday we spent with my mother's sister and her family. Whether we traveled to Manchester, New Hampshire to spend the day at Aunt Nat and Uncle George's home with cousins Melissa and Peter and their dog Pearl, or they all came to our place in Wakefield, there was nothing as wonderful as that day together.

Over the years that tradition slipped away. Nat and George are together in heaven (I assume), having died on the same day, ten years apart. Now Melissa hosts the holiday for her husband's family, and Peter and his wife Laura make the journey from Hartford back to Manchester. We'll see them on Friday for turkey sandwiches before they head home.

We had what was undoubtedly one of our best Thanksgivings 13 years ago tomorrow. Two things happened that made it a spectacular day.

My father had been given the good news that he'd beaten the lung cancer he'd been diagnosed with earlier that summer.

Dave survived a midnight car crash—he was hit broad-side by a car load of drunks, pushed through an intersection, up an incline and through a fence, and into a parking lot. The EMTs who responded assumed from the look of the wreckage that Dave was a dead man. He refused the ambulance ride to the hospital. He woke me with blood on his face, I woke PJ, and we spent the evening in the emergency room.

So there we sat on Thanksgiving, feeling blessed by whatever force it was that was out there handing out the good stuff. Dave was suffering in pain but we were grateful he was not just alive, but able to sit in the same room and enjoy our Thanksgiving meal.

And my father? We were high on excitement. He'd mastered the beast and would be with us for a long time to come. He'd see his grandchildren give him great-grandchildren.

But that wasn't to be. My Dad died in early January, not even two months from that wonderful day when the world was bright and we had so many expectations about so many tomorrows.

There were so many things we never got to talk about. Hopefully when all was finally said, we said the things that were really important.

So, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. We have a lot to be thankful for, I know. I just don't feel comfortable about it all this year. Frankly, I'm scared we could find ourselves in the same kind of place we were in 13 years ago—filled with false hope and expectations of things that won't come to be.

It's pessimistic as hell, I know. I'll be scolded by some for all of this, but it's honestly how I feel.

Let tomorrow come, and let it roll along. We'll hold hands, give thanks, tip our glasses to one another and to the sky, and try to be grateful for all that we have.