donforrester1947 posted: " Over the years, I've known several people whose anxiety levels escalated the week of Thanksgiving. I get that! I've never participated in a Black Friday sale, but I'm not a fan of crowds. Consequently, despite a price reduction you'll not find " Carpe Diem
Over the years, I've known several people whose anxiety levels escalated the week of Thanksgiving. I get that! I've never participated in a Black Friday sale, but I'm not a fan of crowds. Consequently, despite a price reduction you'll not find me on the day after Thanksgiving with a pocket full of cash I want to spend at a Black Friday sale. I might stand in a long line to ride a roller coaster, but never to get into a department store.
Of course, Black Friday and crowded stores has no relationship to the anxiety that the people I'm talking about associate with Thanksgiving. In fact, they might welcome an opportunity to free them from the sense of bondage they associate to their childhood home/family by the experience of being in a crowded store.
They were going "home" to visit parents out of a sense of obligation to one parent or the other. The price of admission to be there for the parent who would be disappointed if you didn't come, was subjecting themselves to a constant barrage of criticism and "you're not good enough" messages from the other parent for whom they'd prefer to avoid.
I can't quite wrap my head around that mentality, but I had the privilege of growing up in a family where rituals around holidays were welcoming and pleasant. If yours was a very different experience, it stands to reason you may approach the holiday with dread.
I once officiated at a wedding for a couple that I came to enjoy immensely by getting to know them through quasi-premarital counseling. I was surprised when the groom shared that his father was not being invited to the wedding. His parents were married and lived out of state. How could he not invite his father as well as his mother?
His reasoning made perfect sense. Throughout the young man's entire life, every family gathering, every holiday, every special occasion had been marred by his drunken father's loud, rude, rowdy, vulgar and overall unacceptable behavior. He was not going to subject his new wife and her family to the horrors of that kind of experience.
How could I fault a young man whose life had been routinely marred by his dad's behavior? I couldn't. It was my belief that he was making a responsible choice. Fortunately, his mother was at the wedding and his father was not.
The first unpleasant Thanksgiving that I ever experienced was the Thanksgiving of my freshman year in college. I was eager to share the sense of family and being home for the holiday. Unfortunately, my Texas Aggie brother and the Corps of Cadets had alternative mandatory plans for Ronnie's Thanksgiving. He would not be home until very late into the night on Thanksgiving day.
It has been 57 years since that experience, but the memory of the disappointment I experienced is filed away in the resources of my memory.
For many, the first Thanksgiving of living with an empty chair at the table is tough. A loved one has gone from this life into the next since the last Thanksgiving. For you, it won't be the same this year.
The thing about Thanksgiving is that it can be a trigger for gratitude for the times shared with those you love, even though they may now be on the other side of eternity.
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The wisdom included in Garth Brooks' song, "The Dance", resonates with me. You may remember them: "... And now I'm glad I didn't know - The way it all would end - The way it all would go - Our lives are better left to chance -I could have missed the pain - But I'd have had to miss the dance..."
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