River: First Thanksgiving without Colleen

[mdlbear]

As the title says, this was my first Thanksgiving without Colleen. Not the first time we were separated for Thanksgiving -- there have been several when she was in the hospital or otherwise too sick to travel. The first was 2008 -- she was in the hospital after having been diagnosed with Crohn's, and I spent the day driving down to LA from San Jose for Loscon with the kids. But she was part of our family's Thanksgiving even if she wasn't physically present at the table. It didn't feel anything like this year.

I'm not sure how to organize this. Let me start with the chronology. We started making Thanksgiving dinners together before we were married -- we had the two of us plus Colleen's mother, who couldn't cook worth a damn. Once we'd moved to San Jose the feast naturally moved with us, acquiring additional household members along the way. People brought appetizers or side dishes; we roasted the bird and made stuffing and Mom's cranberry relish.

After Colleen's mother died in 1999, we started going to Loscon for Thanksgiving weekend. That meant driving down to LA on Thanksgiving Day, stopping at Pea Soup Anderson's for dinner right around lunchtime. They did -- and probably still do -- a good job of it. When we moved up to Seattle in 2012, we went back to hosting it, in whatever house was biggest: N's rented place the first year, then at Rainbow's End, then in the Whidbey Island house.

So this year, down at Rest Stop with N's family and G doing most of the cooking, was just... I'm not sure how to describe it. Wrong? Different? Hollow? More hollow than the others, I think. Something huge that's missing. Which makes sense, I guess. (I note in passing that something making sense to me is not necessarily an indication that it will make sense in absolute terms, whatever that means, or to anyone else.)

This seemed when I started like it was going to be more interesting than it turned out. I was expecting it to be more about my mental state. But alexithymia.

Comments

[technoshaman]

Not some*thing* missing. Someone.

[acelightning73]

After I got married, all the "immediate family" holiday meals devolved to me. My parents would come - they lived out on Long Island. My mother-in-law would come - she lived in a tiny studio aparment in NYC, with no room for dinner guests (and she couldn't cook worth a damn anyway, and she didn't like my parents). After our son moved out, he of course would join the festivities.

When I was a kid, we had these family-type events at my aunt's house in Chelsea, MA. My mother and all her siblings grew up in that house. My aunt, my mother, and a few other relatives cooked for days before Thansgiving and Christmas, and I have never quite managed a feast that massive myself. I can't completely duplicate those early holiday celebrations - for one thing, most of our relatives are dead now. But I feel that I'm not living up to my responsibilities.

So family occasions are generally a bit melancholy for me, but I'm used to it by now.

I should do what my late High Priestess used to do - have a "waifs and strays" Thanksgiving for friends who can't afford to go "home", or who don't want to go home for whatever reason, or who just don't have a home to go to. It was usually sort of a potluck - she'd cook the turkey and stuffing, and other people would bring what they could. She was the partner of Brian Burley, and his friends who worked in bookstores would bring soda and chips (and home-brewed beer). I'd bring my rice stuffing (which can become an adequate vegan dish if you put mushrooms or something in it), dinner rolls, and pumpkin pie. If it were possible, I'd invite you to my holiday dinners

At Christmas, we go to Rochester, NY, where my daughter-in-law's big Italian-American family lives, and talk about a FEAST! My son (who grew up to be an amazing cook) helps his in-laws cook dinner. And everyone insists that I make a cheesecake, and occasionally I'll do some cookies or something.

Big comforting *HUGS* to you, and thanks for putting your concert appearances on YouTube. My husband was intrigued to see and hear you.

[jenk]

Change is hard. You can only find out what it's like by doing it, and possibly adjusting in ways that make sense for you.

[freyjaw]

It's not going to feel the same. You'll find your new level. {hug}

Thanksgiving/birthday was whenever I could make it to Milwaukee to be with family. Mom's dead and Dad's here. I am homesick now. Christmas was the same. Sigh.

I thought I saw Nimitz briefly yesterday. I wonder if his ghost is here, hunting poltermice.