Are You Ready for Your Last Thanksgiving?
My Mom died the day before Thanksgiving 2013, which was also three days before her 57th birthday. Most years, I’m sad and distant during the holidays, opting to ignore Thanksgiving and half-heartedly acknowledge Christmas. The pandemic has added a layer of anger that I’ve struggled to articulate.
I’ve heard dozens of people argue that you simply can’t skip such an important family holiday. Not only is this false, but this year it is incredibly dangerous for our families. I’ve skipped every Thanksgiving for most of a decade, and I still manage to have a fulfilling life with deeply meaningful relationships. You can (and should!) opt out of this holiday this year, or risk ruining it for the rest of your life.
As the next wave of sickness takes hold, I am scared of what lies ahead for my friends and family across the U.S. I fear for my friends who will have empty seats at Christmas dinner or spend their holidays in hospital waiting rooms hoping for good news.
Please, if you love your family, consider skipping this year’s celebrations, especially if you’ll be at an indoor, unmasked, or cross-country gathering. It’s the safest way to guarantee a happier Thanksgiving for all of us next year.
In case you haven’t had an existential crisis today, I want to remind you of a few things:
- Everyone is going to die.
- Your parents are most likely going to die before you do.
- When it comes to death, you might have a heads up, or it might happen when you least expect it.
We use terms like “unimaginable” to describe life without our parents. But we can imagine this reality, as hard as it is. Many of us look away from death and go about life like our parents are immortal until proven otherwise. In the age of COVID-19, this denial is putting our parents (and grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, mentors, bosses…) at risk.
I was initiated into the dead parents club before I was 30. I wasn’t strong or brave in the face of these losses — I was, understandably, a complete and total wreck for most of my 20s. I’m still a wreck in many ways, but I’ve been lucky to have resources and support to guide me into a healthy place with my grief. I worry that the thousands who have lost someone to COVID-19 won’t receive adequate support because of the culture of suck-it-up silence that says there’s always someone worse off than we are. I worry even more that many will have to live with the guilt of exposing a parent to a preventable illness. That’s a trauma I can’t begin to understand.
Yes, a catastrophic loss is unfathomable for many of us until we’re in its depths. Maybe we can never be ready to lose our parents, but we can avoid being subsumed by these losses if we work in small ways to change our relationship with death.
It might sound silly or straight-up-deranged, but I suggest that you regularly remind yourself that your parents will die. Imagine your parents or grandparents dying alone on a ventilator or failing to make it to the hospital before their heart gives out. Sit with that feeling and let it guide your decisions about this holiday season.
I recently saw a Facebook post that broke my heart. In stark black text surrounded by flowers, it read something like We never know what day will be our last, so we need to take advantage of every opportunity we have to be with family.
In a typical year, I’d be high-fiving and “hell yeah!”-ing this mindset. 2020 has forced us all to examine our relationships, and we want to turn this newfound clarity into action. Being with the people we love most despite the risks will feel like we’ve really learned to appreciate them.
But I’d encourage anyone I know to shift toward a safer, albeit less immediately satisfying, way of showing love this year. The truth is that there’s no holiday gathering that will soften the tremendous pain of losing someone you care about.
Yes, going home this Thanksgiving means making memories and sharing special moments with people you love. The risk you’ll take is creating a new set of memories more terrible than one Thanksgiving alone. I can’t tell you many memories of the many Thanksgivings I’ve celebrated. I can, however, recall my Mom dying with perfect clarity.
I spent my last Thanksgiving with my Mom listening to her gasp for air as she slipped in and out of consciousness. I watched her receive last rites and transition into hospice. As I ate terrible hospital food with my family, her rattling breath slowed and stopped.
Fortunately, I was able to say goodbye in her fleeting moments of semi-awareness. I lay next to her, stroking her arms and telling her how sorry I was. We spent the days following Thanksgiving in a dream state of picking out a casket, attending a funeral mass and burial, and eating lukewarm casseroles.
If your parents get COVID-19 in the coming weeks, it will be very different. In the best case, they will show no symptoms, go about their lives, and infect other people who might not fare so well. In the worst case, they will become progressively sicker and spend their final days isolated in the hospital.
You and I will have very different experiences with parental loss. Sure, you won’t experience the agony of watching your parent suffocate in their own bodily fluid. You’ll also never get another hug, kiss, or a moment alone to say your peace face-to-face. To be honest, I’d take the agony of knowing every brutal detail again and again over my Mom dying alone.
Being with family this Thanksgiving won’t absolve you of having taken them for granted before. It won’t help you reach some unspoken quota that makes saying goodbye one day easier. No matter how it all ends, you will always wish for more time — one more Christmas, one more birthday, one more phone call.
Losing your parent will hurt worse than you can ever imagine. You can’t stop that inevitable pain, but what you can control in this nightmarish year is the risk of exposure to COVID-19. Maybe staying home this year is the way to show your parents you’re the person they raised you to be. Be as conscientious, loving, and willing to sacrifice as they were in raising you, and you’ll have something to celebrate for many holidays to come.
