Good Cheer and Appreciation

Each year on a Thursday in November, at dining room tables across the country, families gather to share a meal and give thanks.  My family is no exception.  Each year we say grace and then circle the table asking each family member what they are thankful for.  This year, however, we got to dig into dinner a little sooner than in the past.  My grandfather, the matriarch of our family, passed away in July of this summer, and now everything is different.

The onset of my childhood was based around Sunday nights.  Some of my earliest memories include sitting three across the front seat of my mother's red car that whistled as we drove to my grandfather's house once a week for dinner.  My father would post up in our kitchen, watching television on a small eight-inch screen and bid us adieu as my mom packed my sister and I into the car for family dinner.  I'm not really sure why my dad didn't come.... or maybe he did come... the memories are hazy and blend all ages together; but I sure remember the feelings of love around the dinner table at Papa's house.  Thanksgiving was Papa's holiday.  All seven of his children would make the drive, bring their children, and help prepare a delicious meal.  He was King of the Krols and no one thought otherwise.  Since my grandfather's passing, my mother's family has been at odds.  That's what happens in fragile families.  If the anchor that held all ships at bay is lost, they are carried by wind and see in different directions.  This year, Thanksgiving dinner will be enjoyed my mother, my aunt, her husband, and myself.  A small, intimate gathering, still inundated by feelings of love.

What I am most thankful for this year is a hidden lesson that I have found in my grandfather's passing.  My mother, brother, and sisters are a beautiful exception to the rule.  I am one of six children born to my father, but only one of two born to my mother; thus, the four eldest of my family are my half siblings, but I whole love them.  When my father passed away, it was truly a tragedy.  He lost his battle to lung cancer five days before Christmas 1999.  What I have learned in the fourteen years since my father's passing, however, is that my siblings had the option to run.  My dad was the anchor that kept my family at bay.  He was our common thread, our home base, and our gravitational pull.  Without him there, what glue did we have to hold us together?  To this day, I am not sure.  I was seven at the time that we lost my father, and from that point forward it never occurred to me that my sisters and brother could have stepped out of my life forever; that my mother could have decided not to love them as her own, not to see my nieces and nephews as her grandchildren....but luckily for me, that was not the case.  My family loves harder, deeper, and with more vigor than any family I have ever known.  It isn't about having a shared relative or a thoroughbred blood line that makes two people family; it is love.  It is values.  It is knowing that losing that other person would be losing a part of yourself.  At seven years old, I was not old enough to know who I loved, but I knew who loved me.  I am so beyond lucky to have been born into the family that I have. I have an incredible, awe-inspiring mother, three beautiful sisters, and a strong, handsome brother that care about me more than words can say, and for that I am undoubtedly eternally grateful.

I pray for those who are not surrounded by the same love and affection that I have had the fortune of indulging in over my last 21 years on this earth.  As for those who are as fortunate, I pray that they take that luck and transform it into good cheer and appreciation for our world and the people who create it.