All of the Firsts

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, a day that is traditionally celebrated with family gatherings and a turkey feast.  My last post talked about many of the Thanksgivings of my past.  Next year, if I am still living, I can add today's experience to the list.  

Thanksgiving 2020 is the first one I have ever spent alone in my entire life.  Many people feel bad about others that are alone on the holiday, but I want everyone to know that I'm okay.  I've lived alone for many years.  I do get lonely, sometimes, but never feel abandoned.  My immediate family is in self-imposed isolation in the Seattle area due to the most recent resurgence of the COVID-19 coronavirus.  I'm in my little bungalow in Indiana, also in self-imposed isolation, for the same reason.  My sister, almost six years older than I, is in the St. Louis area with her husband, also isolated.  Same reason.  My friends across town with whom I usually spend holidays that aren't otherwise spoken for, are also isolated because of the virus.  I would feel sad and alone were there not so many of my loved ones all in the same boat!  None of us wants to invite contagion into our homes.  (Reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Masque of the Red Death.)  

My mother died, unexpectedly, on the day after Thanksgiving in 1986, at age 67.  It's a circumstance I really don't want to go into here, except to say that it threw our entire family into a year of "firsts".  The first Christmas without our mom.  The first birthday without our mom.  The first Easter, Fourth of July, Mother's Day, etc., without our mom.  And then the first anniversary of her death.  All the while, the rest of us were trying to keep our grieving father propped up.  We had to create new traditions in her absence.  New places to be for the holiday.  Keeping what we liked about the old traditions, but changing venues and circumstances.  And you know what?  We got through it.  It wasn't smooth at first because Mom was the glue that kept us all grounded, the same as her mother was before her, but it happened.  Just before my mother's funeral service, my brother asked HER brother, a military man who had already lost his first wife to cancer, "What do we do now that Mom is gone?"  My uncle said, "Close ranks".  And that's exactly what we did.

Self-pity is crippling.  Yes, I am on my own for Thanksgiving this year, but I have traded traditional foods with my "family" across town.  We are all alone because we choose to be, for self-preservation.  I don't like it very much, but I don't feel any worse than I do any other time.  After all, Thanksgiving is just another day in the scheme of things.  

I pray that next Thanksgiving will be better and that I will live to see it.  Count your blessings!