Thanksgiving

I had to face Thanksgiving alone, without my mother or my husband. This is the first Thanksgiving without my mother and my husband is in the hospital for treatment of some personal problems he's having. I wasn't alone, per se, I went to my mother-in-law's house, but I was not able to spend the holiday with the two most important people in my life this year.

The last few Thanksgivings were really not that big an event for our family with my mother. She usually would work on Thanksgiving because she wanted the overtime pay, so my siblings and I would spent it with our spouse's families. My husband and I would usually stop in and visit my mother on Thanksgiving afternoon after she got off work for a little while after spending the day with his family. The holiday that is going to be really tough for me to face without her is Christmas.

Today I went out to her grave and put up an evergreen wreath on it. Her grave still doesn't have a headstone because my sister spent the headstone money on doctor bills for her baby, which is what our mother would have wanted her to do. I saw my brother briefly on Thanksgiving and he's going to pay for a headstone. It was a very warm but windy, grey, damp day here and I went to her grave in the later afternoon. All the snow we had gotten on Friday had melted so I had no trouble finding her grave and I hammered the wreath stand into the ground so that it can't be blown over.

I stood there looking at the ground, the ground under which she is buried, and I didn't know what to say. I said the Lord's prayer and then I talked to her for a few minutes, I told her I'm doing okay and hanging on despite of everything that is going on in my life right now. I told her I missed her and that I wished she were her with us; I sure could use her support right now and my sister is pregnant with another baby. I believe she is in Heaven and that she knows all of this but it sure would be wonderful to have her here in this world with us to face these things in life. I didn't cry. This is the second time I've been out to her grave since she was buried in mid-May.

The graves of her parents are only a few feet away, so I went over to them and said a prayer as well. They were the most wonderful grandparents a person could have and I still miss them very much too. My mother was very close to her parents in life and it is fitting she is near them in death as well.

I miss her so much.