Thanksgiving, 2024
Life is short. Make it sweet.
These words were printed on a wooden block that fell off a shelf and landed inches from my feet as I filled my coffee cup at McClain’s Bakery in Kansas City. I picked up the block just as an employee came over, profusely apologizing, and returned it to the shelf next to the coffee urns.
I took my coffee to a nearby table and opened my computer to work on some writing, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the falling block and its message. It felt like a tap on the shoulder that I couldn’t ignore. Life is short. Make it sweet. It also felt like something Dad would have noticed, possibly adding that he could have made a better block with carved letters rather than painted ones. I think Dad was trying to bring those words to my attention with a block that was not precariously perched, but fell anyway and landed at my feet.
In the past several months, I’ve experienced the highest of highs and lows that had me crumpling and wondering if I’d ever be upright again. In July, Frankie, my fourth granddaughter and fifth grandchild, arrived. Frankie entered the world, exploding my already full heart. The following month, my sister, Robin, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and a month later, my Dad died. My cousin, sensing the profound grief and sadness I was experiencing, told me to look for the sparkles every day, even when I didn’t believe they could show up. She guaranteed I’d find them. She spoke from experience.
During Dad’s short stay in hospice, I sat by his bedside for several hours on what would be his last day and let my mind weave its way through countless memories, evoking both tears and laughter. Because the hospice nurse told me Dad could hear me, even though he might not react, I shared my memories out loud. Dad’s hospice room became a confessional for this non-practicing, Presbyterian-raised girl. The door to Dad’s room was open, and during a quiet moment, a woman, whom I didn’t know, entered the room, walked over to me, and gave me a big hug. Again, I had no idea who the woman was, but I was comforted by her gesture. She told me she hoped it was Ok, and said, “I sat with my Dad a month ago, and I know the feeling. I recognized the look on your face when I walked by, and it looked like you needed a hug.” I thanked her, told her she was right, and then she was gone. It was all so fast that it took me a minute to absorb what had happened and the gift I had been given from a stranger…an unexpected sparkle.
Over the last several months, life has reminded me of what really matters, proving it to me over and over again.. On a day when thankfulness is the centerpiece of the holiday, I thought about the many people who have offered their support when I needed it the most. I’m thankful for the love my children have given me, and for showing me, through grief and sadness, that family and friends are what hold us together in life more than anything else. In our grief, we have found our strength, our resiliency, and, thank goodness, our humor. A comparison between poorly folded sheets in the linen closet and the flag the two soldiers ceremoniously folded at Dad’s military ceremony became necessary humor.
I’m thankful for the unexpected reminders or sparkles, that life really is short and that it’s worth doing whatever we can to make it sweet. During a time when life has felt painfully difficult and I’ve wondered what I could be thankful for, I’m finding my Thanksgiving sparkle.
***** Thanksgiving, 2025
Less than six weeks after I posted that essay, Emery would be gone. As this Thanksgiving approached, I thought about the words I’d write, and my first thought was to write nothing. How do I find my thankfulness in a year that started with such profound tragedy? Maybe I don’t need to be thankful, at least not this year. And yet…
I read my words from last Thanksgiving.
In the past several months, I’ve experienced the highest of highs and lows that had me crumpling and wondering if I’d ever be upright again.
I didn’t think I could feel worse. I had no idea. How could I know, while seated next to my daughter at her beautiful Thanksgiving table last year, that it would be the last time I’d share Thanksgiving with her? My daughter, the one who sat with me, called me daily and helped me stay upright during a time when all I wanted to do was crawl back into my bed and sleep through the pain, was gone. She had been teaching me a lesson I didn’t want to learn and became my soft spot to land. In the same calming voice I remember using with her when she was upset, she’d tell me in our daily phone calls,
“Put your hand over your heart, and breathe slowly. Inhale. Exhale. I’m with you, Mom.”
And as I did, she’d breathe with me on the phone. The foreshadowing haunts me, as breathing was what she struggled with in the final days before her death. Emery told me she’d be with me, and I wasn’t alone in my grief. And then she wasn’t, and I’m trying to hold onto every one of her words so they aren’t lost in the mire of where I live.
My grief, personified as a skinny woman wearing a Pink Floyd tee-shirt, named Wanda, will be seated next to me this Thanksgiving. She will remind me that she’s only there because love sent her, and also not to get carried away on the cranberries, because, according to Emery, no one likes the side dish. The small dish with the deep red berries will be my nod to the humor Emery and I shared and will grace the table of this Thanksgiving and every Thanksgiving to come.
Thanksgiving (and every day for that matter) is about finding gratitude; words that used to sound cliché to me, but at this time in my life, cliché has become the air that keeps me breathing.
It is the synchronicity of hearing one of Emery’s favorite songs in the most unlikely of places…a Native American singing Brown Eyed Girl in the Albuquerque airport. It is the many stories that will go untold by my Dad, always starting with, “Laur, did I ever tell you about the time, the person, the place….” And even if he had, I’d listen again and smile, because Dad always had one more story to tell. It is the quarter, found on the floor by my bed the morning of Emery’s celebration of life, with a 1990 date, the year Emery was born. I haven’t carried change in years.
It is the extraordinary, found in the ordinary, because Grief, in her oversized Pink Floyd tee-shirt, has taught me the beauty of slowing down. It is in those moments of stillness that the magic lies. And this Thanksgiving, and every day, including the ones I’m not thankful for, that is where my Dad and my Emery reside.
Happy Thanksgiving to anyone who reads these pages. I hope your day is filled with unexpected sparkles with people you love and cranberries that not everyone likes, but someone made because they love you.
Gratitude. Emery and her Gramps. My daughter and my Dad.