The Last Thanksgiving With My Dad

Losing loved ones makes the holidays hard, but there are ways to honor them while expressing gratitude

Photo of the author and his dad Roman

“It’s the first time you’ve been doing Thanksgiving and your December holiday without your loved one in your life, and that’s just huge.”
— Sherry Cormier, PhD

“Let’s go around the table and say what we are thankful for,” my brother said.

We had never done this before, usually settling for toasts centered around any reason for another drink of vodka, but Thanksgiving of 2016 was different. My dad had just gotten diagnosed with gastric cancer. A CT scan done prior to diagnosis showed lymph nodes enlarged throughout his abdomen. This meant metastasis and death likely within the year. Prayer seemed more appropriate than a toast, but being that we were not religious, we settled for gratitude.

But I was not grateful or thankful for anything at that moment. My brother was a surgeon and I was a medical resident. Surely we should have been able to stop this, right? My dad had faith that we would. After all, he bragged about me and my brother being physicians to everyone he met. But we knew we could not stop what was coming. All I felt was an…