A friend shared a poem on Thanksgiving by a poet named Sara Rian that read:
“i will let myself cry today.
for the ones who should be here.
and the ones who were ready to go.
for the ones who fill up my heart
but not their seat at the table.
for the ones in a memory
instead of a moment.
there is no joy in grief
but there is grief in joy.
so i will sit down and rest
after each spark of gratitude
and i will let myself cry today”
A lot of it resonated, for obvious reasons. It was my third Thanksgiving without my mom, and it will never feel normal to not spend the week before planning recipes with her, just as it will never feel normal to track a hurricane without calling her a billion times to reassess whether we should stay or go and whether we actually trust the forecast now that Nash Roberts is gone.
I definitely “let” myself cry on Thanksgiving. My husband, stepson, and younger daughter went up to Amite to join my in-laws early Thanksgiving morning while my older daughter went to a Thanksgiving celebration at her boyfriend’s family’s house, leaving me all alone in the house to bake rolls (typically my mom’s job) and pies. It was actually kind of nice to have that much time to myself, all cozy in my pajamas, listening to a true crime podcast and shaping dinner rolls … but I ached, actually physically ached, to call my mom and ask her if the rolls really should be this sticky or if I should add more flour.
“Why are you not here?” I demanded of my dead mother, alone in my yeast-scented kitchen. “It’s still so stupid that you’re not here!”
And then I burst into tears.
I cried again later, driving up to Amite with my older daughter, just quiet cliche tears to a sappy Taylor Swift song. (“I know you were on my side/Even when I was wrong,” always gets me because that is exactly the kind of mom my mom was – she held me accountable, to be sure, but always in a way that let me know she had my back.)
But these tears weren’t bad tears. They felt good, honestly.
I agree with the poem that there is grief in joy. Oh, God, yes. Not to be overdramatic, but I know my way around loss and grief. Most of my early adolescent, teen, and adult milestones were joy shot through with grief after losing my brother when I was 7, and that only compounded when my sister died in 2010. My older daughter’s entire first few years were grief-tinged joy because I had a second trimester miscarriage before immediately getting pregnant with her.
But I also think there can be joy in grief. Taking the time to remember someone dearly loved is joyful, even when it’s sad. Allowing myself time to cry in my kitchen felt almost like another holiday indulgence, like that extra serving of mashed potatoes. Letting the tears slip down my cheeks while belting out Taylor Swift with my own daughter was cathartic and soothing and satisfying. Taking a minute to luxuriate in grief, which feels like the wrong word but I promise it’s not, was healing.
Grief, they say, is love with nowhere to go. Thus, it’s love reflected back on you, in some ways, I guess. It’s love endlessly reflecting, love continuing, love persevering in the face of all evidence that a relationship is over.
Taking the time to cry and feel all of my feelings, finding the joy in the grief while honoring the grief in the joy, is now an important Thanksgiving ritual for me.
I am sad now, and like I said, I think I kind of always will be.
But for what I had – even though that means a huge void of sensing what, precisely, I lost – I am now and always will be thankful.
