Thanksgiving 2011

I planned on popping in here tonight to wax eloquent about Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving. It is a pure holiday. No bullshit. No presents to buy or shopping to do. You get together with your family and enjoy a miraculous meal, you talk, you laugh and dig each other for the sake of digging each other. I love that.
I hunger for purity in everything I do. That's why I am eternally frustrated, unhappy, lost and just plain stupefied. Pure moments are few and far between.
I am lucky to have a family that magnifies the beauty of the holiday. Thanksgiving in my home is easy going, laid back, loving and fun. Carol is The Queen of Thanksgiving and we are all her lucky subjects.
So the anticipation is building. The Booze Emporium was Insane today and will be Beyond Insane tomorrow. People need their booze during the holidays.
Got home tired but one day closer. Quiet house, the wife is bowling. Note from Carol: My brother had called to tell us his ex-wife's mother had died.
Death has a way of creeping in or blowing in or marching in and waking you up and shaking you up.
The death of a family member is always sad. It doesn't matter to me that my brother is divorced or that we really had little contact with his mother-in-law over the years. She was a human being that was brought into my life, which means that she matters. And I know that Kathy is hurting tonight and that this holiday season will be painful for her.
I think for it to happen at this time of year is even sadder. Especially Thanksgiving.
You are gearing up to celebrate your life and your love and your family and hopefully your good fortune. And death steps up and says "Hold on, buddy - here's a heavy taste of reality. There will be no celebrating this year."
As a parent you have to be flexible during the holidays. The perfect setting for us is when Keith and Emily (possibly Cooper), Craig and Karen, my brother Ed and his woman, Carol and me gather at our home. All the pieces of the puzzle are there and the result is perfection.
This year Karen cannot be here because she will be with her family. Which makes perfect sense. Eddie will not be here because he wants to stay closer to home. Makes perfect sense. On top of missing two important pieces to this happiness, death has decided to attend. Just invited his bad-ass self with no regard for the effect.
We will have a magnificent day. Thanks to Carol, the meal will be amazing as always. We will laugh and enjoy honest, easy going conversation, watch football and get fatter.
It won't be such a good day for Kathy, her father and the rest of her family.
You have to dig the good days. I have loved many amazing Thanksgivings thanks to my magical family. This year will be a little different. But I will go with that, content to see my beautiful, precious sons, Emily, (maybe Cooper), Carol, to eat supremely, to laugh effortlessly, to watch my favorite sport, to sit back in amazement after everybody has gone home and count my blessings for the loving woman who will be sitting beside me and for another chapter of memories written by our kids and their lives.
I'll be a little more focused, a little sharper. Because reality has intruded to pierce the dream a little.
That's OK. The next time we all get together I will dig it all the more.
Kathy will not have that chance. Her mother is gone.
Dig it,people. Grab this holiday, 11/24/11 and wrestle every drop of happiness you can out of it. You never know when you might lose that opportunity.