Celebrating the Holidays When Your Parents are Gone

Tis the season of simple pleasures and big feelings. I miss my mom and dad.

My mom and dad are both gone. It is hard for me to believe. I did not expect to lose both of my parents before my kids graduated from high school. My grandparents saw my siblings and I graduate from high school and then college. They danced at our weddings and two of them met their great-grandchildren. My parents won’t get to see any of that.

My father died a few weeks before my eldest’s Bat Mitzvah. I laid in bed every day for weeks after his death until my friend came over and said, “We have to finish planning this party. Get out of bed.” It wasn’t easy. I was not in the mood to celebrate. But I got it together and made my daughter a beautiful event.

My mom died a year ago — during Covid. She was barely 78. Even though she didn’t die of Covid, I believe she died from Covid, from the isolation and the lack of therapeutic visits and the loneliness. Before Covid, she was doing okay. But the months of sitting in her room caused a stroke from which she didn’t recover. It is hard for me to think about because it still causes my chest to seize up.

This Thanksgiving, my oldest brother came to visit me. He and his wife flew in from the East Coast and, to my delight, both his adult daughters came too, one from Atlanta and the other from Michigan. I had a full house of kids and family members and dear friends, all piled in together. It was glorious. Simple pleasures and big feelings.

We ate turkey and stuffing and sweet potato-pecan pies. We had singalongs with guitars and singers, from the tone-deaf (my side of the family) to the exceptionally talented (my daughter). We played games and drank Chardonnay and toasted and talked and laughed in clusters around the living room. I felt a sense of peace that I have not felt in a very long time. But as I pet my dog and drank my wine and laughed at my brother’s jokes, I was aware at every moment that my mother was not with us.

She was not sitting in her usual spot on my turquoise sofa with the dog at her feet. She was not unzipping her floral LeSportsac bag, the one I bought her, to take out her iPad and play Words with Friends. She was not buzzing…

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