Usually it does not go that way. A joke or two and someone gets too boisterous, too loud or too inappropriate. Then the high volume parenting begins by the Mom and Dad...
This time was just...perfect.
There are very few joys greater than hearing my family laugh.
So it started out with an unplanned movie trip to watch "Thor", a great time, although the film stopped 3 times. Complimentary movie tickets for our inconvenience and we got to watch the coolest battles in the beginning of the movie multiple times.
We are presently eating leftover pie and ice cream and watching "The Dark Knight".
I am reminiscing, remembering past Thanksgivings at home, and at the families farm with my great grandfather and my moms side of the family. I remember turkey dinners with my dads side. Turkey and sauerkraut. Really.
I had one Thanksgiving dinner while in the Navy, stationed at Great Mistakes, Illinois that I will always remember. A group of us "E-nothing's" (lower than E-4) were hanging together and took a cab to the local mall. The cab driver was from Poland and came in with us. We had turkey subs for our dinner, after grace was said at the pizza place. The cabbie would take no money for his fare.
I spent many turkey days at A.A. dinners, held for all those who's families had disowned them or plain drove them nuts when they were around them.. Dinners of peace and sadness, joy and loss.
I witnessed miracles often back then, men and women reunited with spouses and families healed that were hopelessly shattered. Thanksgiving was a time of honest gratitude for Gods release from the bottle that owned our souls.
I remember one very bad year. Many nights were spent with my loaded 9mm safety off,with a clip of hollow points, barrel at my temple, searching for a reason each time to not pull the trigger.
I always came up with just one reason.
A lady friend of mine had a son who was six years old and all three of us spent a lot of time together. I have always been silly and mildly inappropriate in regard to bodily function sounds. I was a consummate prankster who taught this boy the art of practical jokes. I should never have told him the one about Saran Wrap on the toilet bowl..but back to the original story.
We were all very close. I loved his mom and him. I told no one of the nights with my pistol, but the one reason I always came up with for not going thru with it was I could not let him hear that I had killed myself. I grew up around suicide. It would not touch him..
The next year Shannon, a wonderful lady from our inner circle, as close to the boy Chris as I was, went home to her family for Thanksgiving dinner. They made many remarks about her weight. She went to her home, wrote a note saying they won't have to worry about how much she was eating. The last thing that would go in her mouth would be her twelve gauge. Then she pulled the trigger...
We told Chris about this. He fell apart. He never did get a good enough answer.
True terror is knowing all the reasons you could come up with are gone...
I knelt before the God that had systematically taken away everything I could see to live for and then asked me simply" Am I enough?" I fought this God, telling him he had taken that round but I would get the last. In the end, I couldn't even do that...
He saved me years earlier. He removed the booze but not the self hate. He left multiple residuals to work thru to bring me ever closer to Him. He stayed with me thru agonizing sessions of healing, by his people.
It has been decades since I have had an urge, a compulsion or thought of ending my own life.
He brought me thru the fire and healed all the burns sustained in the trip. He removed the scars and left the memories to remind me, to console me.
Today I have an amazing life. I cannot picture ever thinking of giving it up.Thanksgiving means different things to each one of us and brings back different memories for all.
These ones are the ones that it brings for me...
