A Thanksgiving Wish
There is a difference to being “thankful” on Thanksgiving, and celebrating Thanksgiving. Many will sit around their dining tables and share things that they are thankful for. Thanks to the NFL, we have gone from one football game on Thanksgiving Day to three. My Seahawks will be playing their rival in one of the games.
My view on this holiday, and the entire holiday season in fact, through New Year’s Day, has always been difficult, as it is for many. I was diagnosed with cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, just the week before Thanksgiving thirty-five years ago. Later on in my life, I would work every Thanksgiving and Christmas. I really grew to resent this holiday season.
I remember my childhood holiday season quite well. As a teenager, I would attend our high school Thanksgiving Day game, getting home just in time for my Grandmother’s Thanksgiving dinner which included two of my favorite things, stuffing and more stuffing. Stuffing is mentioned twice because she made two different HOME MADE kinds. Both were a bread based recipe, but the second recipe, actually left over, was stuffed inside the turkey as it cooked. Some may cringe because of eating something that had been originally stuffed in raw meat. But just like my childhood, drinking out of a garden hose, we survived.
When my grandmother passed, I knew that would be the end of the “traditional” holidays for me, at least as far as dinners. I would hope some day, to have children of my own, and then make my own traditions. As I said previously, that got derailed by cancer. But when my daughters came along, I really wanted to make a positive change toward the holidays.
The sadness and grief that I had all those years since my diagnosis, got put on the back burner, as I tried to make each holiday special for my daughters. But as I mentioned, I spent all of my holidays, working. Exhausted, I gave them whatever energy and attention I had left, once I got home. Soon resentment would build.
And then, I would file for my second divorce, which meant holidays would definitely be different. Having a high conflict divorce, I made a conscious decision, knowing that holidays would be a major issue between their mother and I, giving their mother every holiday, every year. Holidays meant nothing to me. All I wanted was time with my daughters. This would at least, or should have, eliminated one argument between us. Besides, I would be working anyway, and the holidays still continued to mean nothing.
That is the way it has been for a long time now. I don’t hang my head about it. It is just the way that it is. I am used to it. But there are so many that I know, that will spend their first holiday having gone through tragedy or sorrow, with the loss of a loved one, or someone struggling for life in the hospital.
My mother still struggles with the loss of my sister from Covid two years ago. Thanksgiving was a holiday that they always spent together. This year I had too many friends, lose a spouse or parent, or sibling. Several of my fellow Hodgkin’s survivors are currently in the hospital, some, fighting for their lives, as their families struggle with their emotions.
The holiday season is indeed difficult for many. But that is why I said, there is a difference between being thankful, and celebrating. And I do not necessarily want to be just thankful on this one day, but every day. I am thankful for each and every person in my life who makes each day I get to enjoy, another to remember.
May you all have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving. Go Seahawks!
Paul's Heart 