Missing

Another sucessful Thankgiving under my belt. As I lounge in a turkey coma, I reflect on the many years I've spent this holiday with the ones I love. This is the first year that Grandma wasn't in the seat next to me at the dinner table. Her absence was obvious. No one pages through the Black Friday ads with me quite like Grandma did. Even when the sales were less than impressive, we always had good conversation over a glass of cranberry slush and a mound of newspaper.

This year I made the meal and although Grandma wasn't here to enjoy it, I know she would have been proud of me and showered me with endless compliments on my cooking. After dinner in years past, we would sit around a partially cleared dining room table, just the ladies, while the guys vegged out in front of the tv. We'd talk about everything and nothing at all, laughing at each other in spite of our full bellies.

Grandma was always the hub in the wheel that is my family. Without that hub, the wheel still turns, though quite more freely and with less direction. No one is quite used to life without that matriarchal pillar and holidays expose our confusion. As they say, change is inevitable, but it seems so out of place when it comes to tradition. The whole point of tradition is the constant practices we come to rely on with fondness. Loss of our loved ones tears at the fabric of our traditions, but the memories give us pieces to start something new.

From Grandma's love and adoration, I create a sense of togetherness with those I hold dear. That's really the best way for me to carry on our family traditions and her memory. I will still always miss the feeling of having her in that seat next to me at my mom's table... bumping elbows because she's left handed and I'm right, passing the mashed potatoes one too many times and in recent years, fixing her plate for her because the neoropathy made it hard for her to do it herself.

I didn't know for sure that 2012 would be our last holiday season together (although I suspected), but I remember taking very detailed mental pictures of so many things, as if they were my last chance to experience them.