a giving of thanks and days I’d rather forget, but cannot.

And then

in the middle of thanks-giving

sometimes

I cry.

It’s the thankful.

It’s the stacked up, overflowing, spilling out, grateful-for-this-cup kind of cry

mixed in with the

still-tender, always shocking anniversary of one of the saddest seasons of my life.

It’s the anniversary of the beginning of the passing of my kind mother from this life to another.

I look at all I have,

And all I’ve had.

And seven years has truly been but a breath –

a sigh and a laugh and a weekend and a joy and a valley and an everything you would imagine it to be.

I’m still here.

And hope reigns stronger than sorrow

but there’s that thread of ache.

Of missing.

A tiny red sprig of a thread

weaving itself through my daughter’s laugh and my son’s toothy grin and the half-completed recipe in my mother’s scrawling cursive for the corn casserole she made every year for this very holiday.

As tightly as that thread can bind everything together,

it can unravel it all as well.

But I’m still here at the foot of this pile of Thanksgiving memories –

the endless Monopoly games with my cousins and the cranberry sauce from the can and the too-dry turkey.

The year Riley and I broke the cranberry tradition and crafted sauce from genuine cranberries

and the year we hosted Thanksgiving at our home for both sets of parents

and the year my dad called me two days before Thanksgiving and said, “You need to start driving west now.”

and then called later that next afternoon as I was somewhere outside St. Louis with our four very young children in our Suburban and my husband in New Hampshire on a business trip and he said, “You better find a plane instead.”

I’m still here

and sometimes

I’m lonely

and sometimes

I feel little

and sometimes

I feel left behind

but

I’m still here.

Arms filled with grace and evidences of remarkable mercy

and sweet gifts and memories

and children

with hope and enthusiasm and glitter shining in their eyes

and small hands to hold

and more stories to create.

The balance of the yesterday and the now and the tomorrow all heavy on my shoulders.

It still feels like robbery some days.

Some moments.

Particularly these holidays fraught with memory and tradition and photos missing beloved people and thick with Family with a capital F.

I’ll stand

in the middle of it all.

Stand and breathe

and cry and rejoice.

Too full to move

and too grateful to dwell on only half of the story.

This is my song.

My giving of Thanks.

Always with the good and the sad 

that have shaped my soul.