Most of the time, when Thanksgiving rolls around, I remember my father’s yearly ‘what I’m thankful for’ speech, which used to be served up between the turkey and the mashed potatoes, as I recall. Every year, it was the same and certainly I never thought about it. My father was not a particularly emotional guy, nor was he prone to fits of psychological analysis. But looking back, what he said was the most important thing.
“We’re all here.”
Now, he didn’t mean ‘here’ in the physical sense, because there were parts of the fam who were hundreds if not thousands of miles away. What he meant was that we’d gotten through another year and we hadn’t lost anyone. No one had died or disappeared; we were all still in touch with one another, in some way, shape or form (and this was before Skype, for goodness sake).
What a blessing it is when you can roll that sentence around in your head – ‘we’re all here.’
In 2002, my dad died and in 2006, my mom died, after a horrible last year battling cardiac disease, dementia, a broken hip and a world spiraling vastly down and out of control. So, we weren’t ‘all here’ again for a while.
And then my two eldest got married and started families of their own. One of them is far, far away and we don’t get to physically see them very often, though Skype is a big part of our lives now. And the others are actually close by and we share them with the in-laws (the way all families must where married kids are concerned). But today, I thought about my dad and smiled because we’re now at that stage where I can say to myself, “things are good; we’re all here.”
For this one moment, everyone is safe. Everyone is in good shape healthwise. Everyone has a place to live and food to eat, jobs, heat in the house, a decent car, time to dream a bit and have a bit of fun. Perfection? Perhaps not but actually extremely good. Feeling lucky – touch wood.
Dad – we’re all good. We’re all here.
Hope you all had a lovely, love-filled Thanksgiving today.
