What Am I Thankful For?

Or: Surviving a holiday about gratitude after the recent passing of my mom.

An adorable stock image I’m “thankful” I found. Photo by Amy Shamblen on Unsplash

Thanksgiving is an American holiday with questionable origins, yet it’s still a time when people in the United States fly, drive, and commute all across the country to see their respective loved ones around the dinner table filled with food to share all that the family is grateful and thankful for. But if you’re in a situation with a recent loss of a loved one—like I am—it can be hard to feel thankful. Hell, it can be hard to “celebrate” something that my mom isn’t going to ever experience again.

This year, I’m in Scotland for my master’s program and didn’t return to the U.S. to celebrate with family and friends. Instead, I joined a Friendsgiving with my flatmates and made cornbread from scratch (with semolina, which is not the same thing as cornmeal—live and learn) and lumpy-yet-edible mashed potatoes mixed with salt, butter, and milk. It was potluck style and one flatmate was in charge of the turkey and dessert, another made vegetables, a friend who lives nearby brought the baked mac & cheese, and another made Chinese BBQ pork, because he is from Hong Kong and we had a very open and inclusive Thanksgiving.

The Thanksgiving spread, in the process of being eaten. <3

We didn’t go around and say what we were thankful for, and while part of me would have liked to hear what others were thankful for, I was honestly relieved. Because, frankly, I hadn’t a clue what I would have said.

How could I be thankful for the extra time spent with my mom during the pandemic, when the whole reason of me being home was because of a worldwide pandemic that disrupted the world and murdered millions of people, my mom’s hip-replacement surgery, and my mom’s sarcoma diagnosis?

I’m thankful to have spent time with my mom…yet I didn’t want to watch her fade away from a strong-willed mother to an adult dependent on her adult children and partner and friends for making her meals and taking the right medication and changing her clothes among other things.

Of course, I’m glad to have had the time with her. But I would also have liked another 20 or so years with her, for her to watch me get my master’s degree, get married, find the love of my life, have children, have my book published—and not necessarily in that order.

It’s hard to be thankful when I’m thinking about a loved one who isn’t here, who will never be here again. I appreciate the time I’ve had with her toward the end, because I feel I understood her more in the time when I was caring for her than in the many other years of my life when I was an “adult” yet still naive about certain things. The hard work it takes to keep a family together, the romantic loves/losses of one’s life, the acknowledgment and realization of what is really important in life. But is appreciation the same thing as gratitude? As being thankful?

I celebrated Thanksgiving and then went out for a well-deserved drink with friends at a bar nearby. It was the first time I celebrated Thanksgiving away from home and family in a good number of years, and perhaps, this year, that was exactly what I needed—change. A reminder that life is full of change. And that I can still have thanks even when I’m grieving and it feels like, at times, I’m unable to feel anything at all (thanks depression).

The point being, you don’t have to force the feeling of gratitude or thankfulness when you’re grieving. You can just grieve, and be, and remembering those you love who are no longer here, and keep living day to day, and that’s okay.

All of that being said, I’m thankful that you’re here.

With love,

Madeline

Madeline Wahl is a writer, solo traveler, and millennial caregiver to her mom, who recently passed from terminal cancer. Her writing has appeared on Reader's Digest, HuffPost, Red Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others. She is working on her first novel.