Thanksgiving

Miss Cathy didn’t want to go over to my brother’s for turkey day this year. It’s a shame because with only a few exceptions it’s been the only holiday that our little family has all been together since Pop died twelve years ago, our only “family tradition”. I know that her aversion to being at Tony’s is directly related to the fact that she’s had to stay over there so many times this year already. Her reaction is kinda like Pavlov’s dog-she hears that she’s gotta go to Tony’s and she instantly thinks about loss of freedom and control, my brother’s house (unfortunately) represents all that is “sickness and dying” and the vulnerability that entails.

Knowing that, I didn’t make a big deal out of it or try to make a case for going to my brothers’. We just stayed here and had a perfectly lovely day-no turkey but a nice meal. We talked a lot during the day and spent time together in the living room, me fussing over the plants and she doing something with the food she was prepping for dinner.

On Friday she went with Adele to see a friend in the hospital. When she came home she was visibly upset, her friend was told he has six months to live. She took the news pretty hard; I didn’t realize that she was as close to him as she was. Listening to her talk about her friend and others that were sick or dying made me think that a lot has changed in one generation.

It used to be that death and dying were for our parents and “their” generation, definitely the old-not the young. “We” were spared having to think about death so it was a just something else that separated us from our parents, widening the gap. Unfortunately, I (and others of my generation) came of age and maturity with the dawn of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s and although it took a little time for it to affect me personally I too started to lose people in my life and I became very familiar with death and dying.

So, although my twenties were as they should have been-a time of wonder, discovery and possibility there was also a layer of fear, hospitals smells, funerals and shock at learning that yet another friend, acquaintance, lover, club kid or business associate was sick or dying. Remember, this was a time before the cocktails and once or twice a day pills. No one was thinking that HIV was a “manageable”, chronic illness. No, in the 80’s a diagnosis meant only one thing-you were going to die, it was just a matter of when.

My generation quickly became adept at speaking a new language, and performing at a level that shouldn’t be required for thirty or forty years but here we were at an age when we were buying our first homes and/or entered into our first long term relationships and we were picking out coffins for friends and loved ones as well.

So, as my mother talked to me about her friend and expressed her concerns and explained sickness and death to me as if it were a foreign land I’d yet to visit I just nodded, a silent passenger, fully aware and well traveled.

I saw no point in “one up-ping” her or saying to her “been there, done that”, I’d told her my experiencing before but she’s either forgotten or just focused on her own mortality as it’s reflected back to her through those around her.

On Saturday morning I heard her familiar, “Heyyyyy!” as I came into the kitchen for my coffee. I peeked into the living room to acknowledge her (remember this is the new and improved “engaging” Ty in the morning, no longer the Ty that would ignore the greeting and scurry back to his lair).

She said, “Can you come here for a minute?”

I walked closer and asked what she wanted. “I want you to sit down, here, next to me.”

“Okay”, I thought as I planted myself opposite her on the sofa, “I can already tell this is gonna be a doozy, glad I’ve got some coffee at least.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I love you and give you a hug,” she said. “I just wanted you and your brother, although I’ll tell him another time, how much I appreciate all that you have done and continue to do for me.” “ It just means the world to me to know that all the hard work and the sacrifices that I made for you guys when you were growing up were worth it because of the men that you turned out to be.” "You just don't know how much that means to me.I’m getting a little emotional now but I just wanted to say, “I love you” and give you a hug-like I told Mark and Brian when I met them, “Hug-sies!”

I hugged her close and held her tight. I told her that I love her, too. We continued to talk and she said that she didn’t know why she was getting so emotional. I suggested that she was probably still emotional after just seeing her friend and learning his fate. It was only natural I told her to think about life and to be grateful for what you have when someone else has so little or so little time left.

She agreed and we sat there for a moment, reflective, in a state of “Thanksgiving”.