Month: November 2025

Prior to Mark’s death we would drive to Chicago for Thanksgiving. It was easier than going during Christmas and less chance of dealing with snow or icy roads. After he died, I didn’t have the energy or desire to repeat our traditional trek to see family and pretend that any of us were okay. We were not and for the first time in many years I made a turkey dinner for the kids and me.

It was a very hard day for all of us. We were still in shock and the idea of celebrating Mark’s favorite holiday without him was absurb. At the very least I thought he should make an appearance, and if he had to go back to wherever he now resided, I’d let him go after he ate. So goes the magical thinking of grief.

Because Mark’s death was so new and fairly close to the holidays, we got a lot of support. The day was quintessentially fall – chilly, sunny, and gorgeous. Neighbors stopped by all morning, we got many phone calls and texts and felt wrapped in care and love. While grateful, we were heartbroken, trying to be brave, and attempting to eat a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with a lump in our throats that refused to budge. It was a painful day and collapsing in bed at the end of it was the highlight.

Last year Mike and I celebrated the holiday in a new house that was full of family, friends, and several of my coworkers who couldn’t make it home for the holiday. What a difference six years can make. While gathered around the kitchen island with glasses of prosecco, Mike welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming and I made the toast. “To all of you who have filled our home today, to those we wish could be here, and to those who watch us from the other side. Happy Thanksgiving…..let’s all meet here again next year.” The last part less a toast and more of a plea to the universe to keep everyone we loved beside us.

This week there will be many people like me and my kids during that first horrible Thanksgiving. People who are bereft, lonely, heartbroken, and in shock. To walk into a room and know you are accompanied by the dark cloud of loss, the one nobody knows what to say to, the one who can only manage a weak smile with fresh tears in your eyes is so very hard. Life may go on but it doesn’t go on smoothly or easily. It takes an enormous amount of guts to show up which is something only the experienced can appreciate.

If you follow me on social media you have heard this advice before but I think it bears repeating every holiday. If you are in the room with someone whose loss is fresh and painful, please do not turn away. There is nothing worse than putting yourself out into the world after a death and feeling like a pariah because it makes people uncomfortable. Will it feel awkward? Yes. Will it be hard? Absolutely, and so maybe this will help. Ask them what their person’s favorite part of Thanksgiving was, what they most looked forward to eating, if they had a tradition that they never swayed from. It’s a neutral question that brings to the surface more happy memories than sad and everyone who has lost someone dear to them loves to talk about them.

This doesn’t mean they won’t cry. Everything makes them cry but they are tears of loss combined with gratitude for days that are gone but not forgotten. Hold their hand, hold their gaze, hold their loss. Stay with them and for the briefest of moments make them feel less alone in their sorrow.

Mark’s loss is no longer new or as brutal and I can recall with fondness the memories we made around Thanksgiving. He loved pumpkin pie. I hated it so he learned how to make it and patted himself on the back every year for how great it turned out. He’d try to convince me to try it, I’d tell him no and he’d tell me I was missing out, that he couldn’t believe anybody could actually hate pumpkin pie. I can still see his smile, his vibrant eyes, his joy at being around a table full of family. My mom, who hosted Thanksgiving for years, would tell you that you need to buy several bottles of cold duck and to crack one open before anyone arrived.

Showing up for the holidays when your favorite person is missing is incredibly brave. Loss loosens its grip ever so slowly, you relearn how to breathe, and how to live your days not terrified of the future. It is a profound, holy journey that is only made less painful when you can feel the hands on your back of family and friends propping you up.

And since it turns out that those we love are still hanging around, while you’re on the phone with your sister and brother-in-law asking them (again) how to make the dressing, some of them are whispering in your ear that you really should give that pumpkin pie another shot and that a glass of cold duck makes for a more relaxed hostess.

Bless their missed hearts.

xo

My siblings and I spent our childhood going to wakes and funerals. Every year someone in our extended family would die and we would make the forty five minute drive to the city my parents grew up in for the wake. Back then this was a two day event followed by the funeral on day three. As young kids we were more familiar with funeral parlors than parks.

We watched all methods of mourning (or stoicism) and the influence this had on us was life long. The toughest death of all was our thirteen year old cousin and a room full of people in collective shock. When my grandma’s brother died and it was time to take the coffin from the funeral home to the church, my grandma threw herself on top of it and started wailing. My mom and dad scurried us out of there and later I would overhear Dad say how mad his mom’s behavior made him – the message being that you could mourn but for god’s sake keep the drama to a minimum.

A few years ago I was having a conversation with a close friend who had an uncle who was not long for this earth. “Remember,” she said, “how every time you’d go to a family function all the aunts and uncles would be sitting at the same table? They’d have their coffee and watch everything going on and comment amongst each other about everyone.” “Oh yes,” I said and could immediately picture every one of those people in my own family sitting together. “Now we’re those people,” she said. “We’re the older ones at all the family events having our coffee and saying do you remember so-and-so? Whatever happened to them?” It was as if I had never considered this for a single minute. What do you mean we’re the older aunts and uncles now?

My grandma’s niece was named Belle. I never knew the connection when I was growing up other than that they were related. They did everything together and were more like sisters. My dad once said that Belle was the kindest person he knew and Mallory has her middle name. Belle and her husband had one son, Hal. Hal was ten years older than my oldest brother and for us the ultimate cool guy. He was an architect and after he got married and we went to he and his wife’s house for the first time we were in awe. Up until then everyone decorated with whatever Sears was offering but this place was different than anything we had seen before.

For the entirety of our lives, Hal was there for every event – first with Carol who died from breast cancer and then his later in life partner and wife, Cindy. At some point a third cousin a few years older than you becomes your equal but every year when we would go back to Chicago for the holidays the first thing Hal always said to me was, “Hey, kid.” After our uncle died last year and then our mom, my sister and I would joke that we needed to protect Hal at all costs, wrap him in bubble wrap, and put him in a secure location because losing the last person in our parents’ extended family was too much to consider.

But this spring something did happen to him. He fell, was seriously injured, and for six months his wife moved heaven and earth to get him better. Cindy didn’t get the outcome she and the rest of us prayed for but she did get time with him and on my side of loss that is immeasureable. Last week I flew home for the services and was okay until the cemetery when in unison we repeated after the priest, “And may perpetual light shine upon him.” I knew if I let out a single sob it wouldn’t stop so I dug a fingernail into the palm of my hand and made it through to the end where we all walked away from an urn that held Hal’s remains as if that was a perfectly normal thing to do on a Tuesday.

In my life I don’t think there was anyone who opened up my eyes to design, gardening, and less is more (but make sure the less is good quality) more than Hal. He was an older brother to all of us, the last tie to everyone we grew up with, the ones who shaped our lives, the table full of relatives at every event.

My brother wrote some thoughts down to make at the funeral home and asked me to look them over. I wanted to add something but had no confidence in saying it out loud without my voice shaking so I said it was great and handed him the piece of paper back. Maybe it wasn’t the time or place to say that when Hal called someone a son of a bitch you believed it to be true even if you had no idea who he was talking about.

Now the aunts and uncles table has gotten turned on its head once again which is how life unfairly goes. But, oh my, were we ever the lucky ones for all those years when it was full to the brim. As for you, Hal, may perpetual light always shine upon on you. I don’t think you ever knew all the ways we adored you.

*Hal read everything I wrote and frequently commented the same thing every time – a single red heart.*