Thanksgiving

Oh my goodness. Do I love Thanksgiving or what! Yes, yes I do. It was exactly 5 years ago today that my mother passed away. She died on Thanksgiving day right around dinner time. Alzheimers related illness. What excatly would that be? She forgot to live? Something like that. Someday, I will write a book about her and in it, I will explain all the little sorted details about her life and death. Should make for an interesting read and write, I suppose. In any event, my point is that I love Thanksgiving and the fact that my mother, my very best friend in the world, died on this day is great. It makes me appreciate it even more. My father dying on Christmas day also poses an interesting ice breaker. People love when I bring that up in conversation. What the fuck do you say to someone after that? I should probably not mention that anymore. It might make folks uncomfortable... I don't like to make people uncomfortable. Having your parents die is hard enough but having them die on major holidays is pretty crazy. My dad died a long time ago, I was four. He was sick and had a lot of heart attacks (7 is a lot...he was only 40), so he had heart disease and wasn't going to live to see me grow up. It sounds so sad, but it's not. I'm glad that he passed away on Christmas. I'll never forget the day he died, and it makes me appreciate Christmas a little more. I used to be really bitter about it and act like a little cry baby but now that I have kids of my own, I can enjoy the day through their eyes and that is awesome. So, the parents dying on the two favorite holidays is a memorable thing that sets me apart from all my other orphan friends (I don't think I have any other orphan friends nor can I say I'm an orphan... I'm a little old for that) and I do believe that it has made me a better person. I have learned to find the good stuff beyond the "bad". I really think that my father dying when he did made my life better. I probably would still live in Ohio (since Ohio voted for Obama, I'm really happy with them right now) and would have gone to Catholic school and been all long hair and dresses... how horrible would that have been? His passing caused my mom to move my brother and I out to California and we've been here ever since. Had he lived, she wouldn't have packed up all our stuff and hitched a ride with a friend to "start over" (another chapter in the book about my mom...). I haven't quite figured out what benefits there are from my mom dying so early but, I'm sure in time, I will.
Well, after all that dramatic bullshit, let me say this: Thanksgiving was wonderful and Suzanne made a delicious dinner, once again. It's great having a mother in law who cooks really well and is truly a genuinely nice person (shout out to Suzanne, thanks for dinner...) I wish I was a stoner again on Thanksgiving because then I could eat and eat and eat.