Be Thankful

What do you give thanks for when your world has come tumbling down around you?

Thanksgiving Dinner was so strange tonight.  The food was delicious...I enjoyed every bit of it.  The company was wonderful...I love my family so much.  But the whole celebration seemed empty...not just in me, but in the room.

It would have been one thing if Susan had been just visibly absent tonight...but it was so much more.

She had always brought the moment with her when she entered a room...and that was absent tonight.  Gone was the laughter...the fun...the love of a girl who simply relished these moments...these times where we shared our thanks for being so lucky.

That luck seemed to have run thin.

The drive home was quiet and reflective.  The boys' heads fell in opposite directions as they nodded off to sleep.  And I drove...staring at the empty passenger seat...the whole way thinking about how she should have been curling up and closing her eyes next to me as I drove.

The word three pounded through my head...as I tried to make sense of how we had become a family of just three.

One at a time, I carried my sleeping boys from the car...to the stairs...and to their beds. Thinking about how we would have been so thankful for this early night.  How we would have spent the next few hours alone...just us two.  Free to be thankful for how lucky we were in each others arms.

Instead...I rambled aimlessly around our house...like a lost old man.

Finally I sat...and forced myself to examine what I have to be thankful for as my world comes tumbling down around me.  I have two boys...full of their mother's love...full of their mother's laughter...full of their mother's compassion...full of their mother's talents.

I'm lucky to have this...but I still wish I had that same luck I was so thankful for nine months ago.