Giving Thanks

Dear Steven,

We had another successful Thanksgiving celebration. When I looked around the dinner table, laden with enough food to feed a small starving 3rd world nation, my head is filled with the usual obligatory cliché things that we should be thankful for... family and friends, health, blah, blah, blah. I am so very tired.

Your great-grandmother will be moving into an assisted living facility soon. This is the right thing to do and the right time. The house is just not safe or comfortable for her anymore. She will be happier where there will be other people for her to talk to and activities to do. She will be well cared for. She will get 3 delicious meals a day. This is the right thing to do and the right time. This is what we tell ourselves. This is the right thing to do.

Guilt is a funny thing. Logic tells us one thing while an annoying voice buzzes contradictory, reproving tongue-clucking admonitions in our brains. We are so very selfish.

And then I realize that we really are selfish... and greedy. She helped you grow into the man that you are... a very fine man. We will miss the years that the two of you would play card games that you made up, after school. Years of pumpkin pies that you helped her make. Years of report cards and shadow boxes and hugs and kisses. Years of blankie mendings. She and you have always had such a special bond. She has been part of most of your happy years. I guess we just want those years to go on forever.

But there is a natural progression in life. And we must make new happy memories with new changes. Change is inevitable. Change is good.
A wise young man told me, "Stop finding flaws in my logic in order to further your point against yourself." And so I will.

Always hopeful, yet discontent.
He knows changes aren't permanent.
But change is.
- Rush "Tom Sawyer"

I rethink our blessings.

We are thankful for our health. We are thankful that we have enough to eat and enough to share. We are thankful that we have family and friends to share with. We are thankful for all the years that we have had with many happy memories, and all the happy years that have yet to come. For all these and more, we give thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving, Son.

Love,
Mom and Dad