Turkey day memories

Last night as I was chopping onions to get ready for making the crockpot stuffing this morning, I was thinking about my mom…as I looked at my hand holding the onion, her wedding ring, which was passed down to me sparkled back at me and for a moment I was remembering watching that hand and that ring chopping and slicing and cubing on Thanksgiving morning while I stood and watched and we told stories and laughed.   OH how I miss that.  I have her hands.  I remember when she lay dying I looked at her arms and her hands and I tried to memorize them in my mind.  Those hands that lovingly prepared many a family meal, and those arms that picked up my children and wrapped around me when I was sad or overwhelmed.  Those arms that didn’t want to let go when it came time to say goodbye and travel back home.     

Last night I dreamed of mama and I would venture to say she was actually in the room.  My dreams were so real that I could smell the aromas of Thanksgiving dinner.  In my dream I was awakened by the sound of her bustling around in her kitchen, getting started on what she considered heaven on earth…having all her kids and grandkids in her home for a few hours at the same time.   Still, in all the busy ness of getting ready for the big dinner, she always took time when the boys woke up, even when they were teenagers and capable of fending for themselves, to make them bacon and biscuits and whatever else they wanted when they came into the kitchen.  The Thanksgiving stuff being prepared was pushed aside for a time so she could “love” my boys as she did best. 

She didn’t use recipes, they were all in her head.  She might let me chop the onion, or cube up the velveeta for the macaroni and cheese.  But mostly she just wanted my company, someone to tell her funny stories while she worked.  And I always had a funny story to tell, most of them beginning “remember that time you…..”  My dad would wander into the kitchen every once in a while to get a coffee refill and ask if it was time to carve the turkey.  The sounds of Nintendo could be heard from the back room where the boys had set up camp for the weekend. 

Eventually, my siblings and their families would arrive and she would light up every time a car door was heard.  She truly loved her family.  We were the most important thing in the world to her next to her faith.   And even today, 9 years since her death, I feel her love surrounding me as we prepare to go spend Thanksgiving with Chris and Juliet.  Oh, there’s a sad space in my heart cause Andy isn’t here .  Like my mom, I am at my happiest when the ones I love are all in the same place.  But I am so thankful for all those years that I had her here.  What a blessing it was to have a mom like her. 

I remember that last Thanksgiving.  She had been told she had weeks to live.  She was so weak and so sad knowing that she probably wouldn’t make it to Christmas.  She wanted so much to do the Thanksgiving dinner at her house and do all the cooking…but there was no way she would do that. Even with help it was not going to be possible.  My sister in Law Shelly offered to have it at her home and we all were so grateful because we needed a place where we could all gather as a family for that Thanksgiving we knew would be her last.  I wrestled with some dark feeling that year.  I was pretty angry with God for not healing my mom.  I was pretty aggravated that such a wonderful, light up the world person was sick.  But I was also thankful. Thankful to still have her. I remember we were walking the few short steps from her front door to the car and she stopped and said “Frenchy, I can’t do this, I can’t go.”  My dad said “what do you mean you can’t go Betty?. Get in the car.”  I just can’t she said.  He told her “just get in the car. You can rest at Garry’s.  I know you are tired.  But you don’t have to do anything but sit”.  She did get in the car.  But I realized it was not just the physical that was keeping her from wanting to get in and go.  She knew that it was her last time. Her last time to be with her entire family.  She knew that to get through it she would have to put on a smile and pretend to enjoy it when the only thing she could imagine in her mind was that next year, we would be without her.  It makes me cry to think about it.  She was so brave. She put on such a strong face of determination in the midst of her overwhelming sorrow.  That day we had a lot to be thankful for…but it was hard to be thankful  that day.

The Thanksgivings that followed were never the same.  For one, none of us were ever together again at the same time.  A couple of times we might come close to having everyone there….but she was the central focus…The one who drew us together.  You didn’t dare not come to Thanksgiving when she was alive because you knew how much it meant to her.  As the years have gone by, I have experienced a lot of emotions on Thanksgiving Day. 

As the boys have grown and moved away, I have not always had them with me on Thanksgiving like when they were young.  Several years I spent Thanksgiving alone because they went to their dads that year and I didn’t have the time off work to travel across the state twice in the same day to have a turkey dinner.  One year, my ex husbands wife invited me to their thanksgiving because the boys were going to be there.  I know she meant well.  But it only magnified my sadness that year.  No way I could go to their home and watch them interact as a family when I had no one.  One year I went to a boyfriends for Thanksgiving but it was when our relationship was pretty much over and I knew the end was in sight and Thanksgiving only served to depress me even further. 

I got through those sad Thanksgivings.  And now I have Joe.  And I know that no matter where we are on Thanksgiving, or who is with us, we have each other and that tops my Thankfulness list this year. 

My family is scattered.  This year I don’t even know where my siblings are going to be celebrating Thanksgiving.  I think it’s a natural progression of life.  Kids grow up and marry, have kids of their own.  There are inlaws and step families and work and all sorts of things that keep us apart.  What won’t change is that as we sit down today to our Thanksgiving meal, I know that every single one of us will be remembering my mom and wishing that she were here with us.  And each one of us will be smiling as they think of her because to think of her is to remember something joyful.  Her laugh, her smile. 

My thought today as I was making my crockpot stuffing was that every single year my dad would take a bite of my mom’s stuffing and say “TOO MUCH SAGE BETTY”  It wasn’t Thanksgiving until he said that.  And she would reply “Well don’t eat it if you don’t like it”.  Ahhhh, the memories.