I look at most photos with a combination of grief, longing, joy, and wonder. This one, however, I still struggle with getting my brain to pass disbelief. When I see it, it’s as if I am drawn into it- I look at every face and can recreate what must have been happening… This is what Thanksgiving looked like in 2020:
Kathryn hadn’t even tried to eat yet- she was too excited for the holiday and to show off her turkey headband. She was often so excited about life that other things took a back seat. My dad is half-way between a silly face and a bite of pernil. He was famed for his eyeroll and tongue-sticking-out pictures (I wonder who inherited that- insert sarcasm here). Kristian had stuck his finger in the gravy and is sucking on it like a lollipop. This is perfectly typical of our “saucy” kiddo. Our family friend, Randy, is literally the ONLY one who truly posed with a smile for this picture and I managed to cut off the top of his head off while taking it because I was simultaneously managing the chaos that comes with a holiday dinner with 4 littles and squeezing everyone into the frame while standing on the dining chair. Kaleb was completely distracted by the food. He was often distracted by food. My mom almost made it in time for a true smile, but I can tell by the blur of her hand (and the location of Kasper’s plate) that she had, in the nick of time, prevented a mess and the need for making another whole plate. And Kasper was completely enthralled that he got to try so many new things in one meal. He was 11 months old at the time.
Every person in this picture died within 15 months of taking it. Randy would die of covid over the following summer, my dad before the next thanksgiving, and (as you know) tragedy took my mom and our KGRs three months later. To this day, this picture marks time most potently for me. The obnoxiously high emotional state of it creates the aroma of “before” and “after”. And disbelief comes because it feels like the picture should look other-worldly somehow, but it doesn’t. Everything about it is real and common place, seemingly like it was just another day- except it wasn’t.
Thanksgiving has been the toughest holiday for us. By our second thanksgiving post-tragedy I realized that a major reason it is so hard is because we NEVER got a thanksgiving as a family. Not one. Carlos was not around this table because he had been admitted to the hospital with covid the day before. Thanksgiving morning I remember praying “God, if he is to go home, please take him without so much suffering”. Watching him try to breathe through our video call was beyond painful. He was released from the hospital on 12/3, but he said a tearful goodbye to his mama on the phone only 2 days later (and so began our dance with grief). Then, the following Thanksgiving, (2021) the kids and I had covid just a few days after my dad’s passing (likely to covid) and we didn’t want Carlos to be exposed again. I don’t think we took a picture that holiday. We were still reeling from the loss of my dad and once again grieving the separation from Carlos. Three short months later the opportunity of a 2022 family Thanksgiving was stolen from us in a blaze.
The above is a FULL page of text. I feel it ALL every time I see this picture. It is still surreal. I still shake my head.
…
One of our greatest joys since our family ran ahead to heaven is finding ways to merge some of our past traditions and memories with the present. We find little ways to include our KGRs: a bear that is made from their clothes, hats in their colors, buttons with their faces, notes from Bubbles (our elf on the shelf), meaningful gifts “from” the kids, and the list goes on. There are no dry eyes around us when we are truly known by others and are together. It is beautiful and wonderful and terrible. Honoring our KGRs in this way works. But it can’t work with Thanksgiving because we had no standing tradition to include. We have nothing to build on. This is our missing holiday.
If you ask just about anyone, the most important thing about thanksgiving is being with those we love. Togetherness. But when a couple leaves the family of their birth and beginning and cleaves to each other, all of a sudden there are three family thanksgivings we want our hearts at. If a family is re-blended this matter is complicated by a 4th and sometimes even a 5th longing. I know, I was one of those. In our post-tragedy lives, with friends who have become family, it becomes more of a beautiful mess. We want to be with everyone, and we want to love everyone well, but no place “fits” because it always excludes someone.
As a child, my parents solved this dilemma by simply choosing a day that is not the 4th Thursday of November. It worked well for us. Sometimes I got more than one thanksgiving with different traditions and different foods. They were even spread out enough that I could enjoy them without stuffing myself (pun intended). This solution will work for us in part, but we’re still left with what do we do with the holiday day itself? If we just sat around, grief would swallow us whole.
Do you remember in my last blog I suggested another avenue for the no target love to travel? The love in action that I want to give (and cannot give) to Carlos’ mom, my dad, my mom, Kathryn, Kaleb, Kristian, and Kasper is our grief. While the grief does not go away, it becomes more bearable and purposeful when we gift it as love to others.
This is another lesson I learned from my parents, how to love well. When I was a child, our family motto was “there’s always room for one more”. With five of us blended family kiddos there would often be a tag-along friend and/or there would be loved one(s) invited because they didn’t have another invitation. We never worried about how we would fit everyone at the table, we just crowded around. We never worried whether we’d have enough chairs because as a contractor, my dad always had 5-gallon spackle buckets floating around. They were tall enough to sit on and eat at the table. I remember wanting to be the one to sit on that bucket. It was a special way to say “we love you so much that how we make this work is completely unimportant compared to you being here”.
For the first time post-tragedy we were able to put it all together this year without offending anyone by telling them “no” to coming to their Thanksgiving dinner. We had dinner at our house before the appointed day and invited family of all kinds: those who are blood-related, those who have loved us as family without the genetic ties, and those who could use a place to belong this year. Then, on the day of thanksgiving itself, the five of us loaded into the van with a little gift of appreciation and we drove around giving hugs and telling people how much they mean to us. It was beautiful. I can’t think of a better way to show our gratitude to those who have stuck by us through all of the awful & hard on the day dedicated to thanksgiving. And the boys ushered in the Christmas season by watching movies as we drove. Maybe the only memory we didn’t honor in all of this is the bucket. Next year, I think kill be sitting on something different while we eat.
To this day, Thanksgiving ushers in our heavy season. It feels like a precipice. Then (in 2020) it was the beginning of the end. Four years later, it is a reminder of the start of our season of loss and trauma. Part of me still wants to jump backward into that time and shout a warning: “In less than two weeks you will know grief, and It won’t stop knocking on your door for 15months”, but I know that it would help nothing to know. God has a purpose for the bodily response of shock- to prevent overload and destruction.
Thanksgiving of 2020 was the start of something else too, though. We were standing at the precipice of a well of love and gratitude from God and His body (of Christ) that we had not yet had cause to know the depths of. What better way to honor our missing holiday than to tell those who have loved us so well how grateful we are for that love?!
Sometimes gratitude and love are all that we have and all that we need to run on (sorry Dunkin). Feeling the pain while acknowledging love and gratitude is one of the ways that we’re able to “Keep Going, Really!”
Signed,
This tear-filled grateful vessel
-Markie
The Missing Holiday
