A Sobering Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has been a grand tradition in our house, as I know it is across our great land.  This uniquely American experience allows us to sit back and take stock.  It gives us a chance to gather and cherish our loved ones.  Every Thanksgiving we have experienced has been great.  For some we have been separated during our Navy career days, but for the most part we have grabbed Thanksgiving by the throat and wrung every last happy experience out of it we could.

This year was no different.  We spent the morning prepping for dinner.  Our son and his family from the East coast called and we had a great conversation with them.  We always miss them terribly at the holidays but the reality that living across the country force us to not see each other as much as we would like.  We've come to accept it and are grateful that they can be together with our daughter-in-law's family at this time of year.  When our daughter and her family arrived we basked in the controlled chaos that is present whenever teenagers descend.  We had invited newly arrived neighbors and had a delightful time getting to know them.  The company, the food, the conversations, the love and respect were all sublime.  I wouldn't change a thing about the day.  Almost perfect!  Everyone reluctantly bid goodbye as the evening waned and headed home.  It really couldn't have been a better day.  

And then the news came.  We had been in contact with the wife of my college roommate over the past few days as he faced some health challenges.  We heard this evening that he died this morning.  He was a great guy with a loving family and will be sorely missed.  Not only was he a good friend in my formative years but his wife was a friend of my wife's since Junior High.  And they introduced us so many years ago.  But it's not like we were close.  It's not like we had even seen each very much in the past several years.  We were close but our lives had diverged in a way.  But we had history.  History that is unique.  Whenever someone dies with a shared history with you I think a little piece of you dies with him.  It's a weird feeling.  There are so many shared experiences and great times that feel like they are gone forever.  And when you get to a certain age, mortality slaps you in the face more often than you'd like.  You start to see horizons that weren't there before.  You start to look lovingly at so many wonderful and yet normal things and people that make up life around you.  Not to be fatalistic, but you start to see the end.  But here's the good news.  Those feelings are sporadic.  They come to you at times like tonight when you are reminded of your mortality.  Tomorrow is another day.  Tomorrow will be beautiful.  And tomorrow will be cherished like never before!