One holiday down, albeit the easy one, but it is the one that starts the holiday season. We spent Thanksgiving with my parents in Connecticut. Yes there was a missing chair and place at the table, but there were also laughs, and memories and very few tears. My meltdown came the night before, when it hit me like the Acela train that it really was Thanksgiving without Connor, that we would be traveling to Connecticut as a group of 3 instead of 4.

That is when the tears began to flow, Mark tried to help, saying “it was just another day, and we were going to have dinner with my parents.” As much as I knew what he was trying to do, it made me mad. It wasn’t just another day that we were going to have dinner with my parents. It was fucking Thanksgiving, and we were going to have dinner with my parents minus one of my children. Nothing was going to make that any better, any easier, or soften the pain. There would be an empty place setting (not actually set), but in my heart and soul. Kyle and Connor should be arguing that they can’t sit next to each other, but which one of them got to sit next to mom. And then they would be silly in the living room, both making my dad laugh. Then both of them helping my Mom with her walker, just like it was second nature. Then Connor watching football with my dad, and picking on Kyle that he really doesn’t know much about football. Those are the things that I missed, their poking at each other, both literally figuratively.

What I learned from yesterday is that those memories will live in my heart forever, just like them always having to have Ranch Dressing on their Turkey when they were little. But things change, that is the only thing constant in this world. I wasn’t ready for this change, but we never are, I don’t think I will ever embrace this one. But someday I will learn to live with it, and make it part of my new life. Little changes and movements at a time show that I am getting there.