Reminiscing

As I sat down next to my kitchen, staring at the space, the eerie quietness of the morning, reminiscing of years back and our story, our beautiful family story the one that no longer is, the one we have to reinvent, as quiet as the morning I just kept going back on and on to our last year Thanksgiving Day, I could vividly  remember Eunice helping me out with the cooking and baking cookies the day before Thanksgiving like we had opened a bakery, seriously! She was so detail oriented and between she and and Ebe had even marked the containers that we will use to put the different dishes we were preparing for the celebration, that Thanksgiving  day was so special and I remember she prepared with loving care a  pasta dish from one of her favorites restaurants in Town, she wanted to make her own version so together we had journey through Goggle and found the secret recipe for the "Chicken Rigatoni D" that she absolutely loved!
As with every special celebration the girls had set the table up and like I've always told them; "oh looks like a picture from a magazine" "Pinterest pin worth" they were so proud and I could not be prouder of my beloved daughters, and of course my beautiful boy Yael that like every year will go over the list of the dishes that he needed to have me cooked "for sure" so he could feel like Thanksgiving was complete.
We had dear friends over and we had an amazing time.


Although I did not grew up celebrating Thanksgiving -as in Mexico is not a tradition to do so- when we moved to the United States and as my kids were growing up, we started to celebrate it, this tradition became one of my favorites Holidays as I find it so meaningful, over the years we have had so many wonderful memories of those Thanksgiving Celebrations but for some reason last year was particularly special, and as it turned out to be also our last Thanksgiving Day that we were to celebrate all together as a family, we really didn't even imagine the size of the tragedy we soon were to face, we were oblivious of such devastation and the nightmare that will unfold just a couple of months ahead.

For this year as the week started, I knew it was not going to be an easy week to face I knew it.
A few weeks back I really didn't have an idea of what we were going to do, the whole thing about the upcoming Holidays is something that truly stinks, yes it does, when you have experienced this kind of loss, the holidays sort of make you want to escape to an island where the Grinch may have found his happily ever after...so you get the idea; I know this may sound dramatic but it really becomes the elephant in the room and I guess is up to every person and every family to discover what eventually will work for them; For me, I'm not there yet, it will be like almost all in my life lately; one day at the time, I'm gearing more towards short term, really short term planing.
So for this Thanksgiving my dear friend, kindly asked if we would feel motivated to share the day with them, our friends, they aren't only friends they are family to us and I know they can be with us even in our low moments, they can and I'm so grateful to them for that.
Thanksgiving day came, as much as I dreaded, the day arrived...it started calm but slowly as I started to work on the turkey ritual of every year, my tears started flowing down my face and they really didn't stop for hours, I disliked the day so much, I became so frustrated and mad as I was thinking my daughter should be there with me. Nowhere else but with me. With us, her family.
 I cried, I fought my demons, my grief dragons and I was exhausted but I knew we needed to find some light for the day, I promised to Eunice that I would not give up to my sadness and I that I would find strength, you see, the realty is it didn't matter how pissed I was, how unfair, and how awful it felt, it does not matter because this is our reality, this is it, I need to learn how to live a life in which I can find the balance between grieving and living, one in which light and dark can coexist as much as sadness and joy, so for that day, in the end we had a safe place to go, our family was there for us, we were embraced by them, loved by them, no fixing, no judgments just embraced and loved...As the night unfolded we had precious moments, we created memories, yes we felt the huge void in our lives of not having our precious Eunice, we remembered her so much, we shared our memories of her as we also shared tears, she may not be physically with us but she is always with us. She is, and that gives me solace to keep going even at the moments when all I want is for just one more instant  with her on this earth. One more hug, one more kiss.
One more...

"I'm grateful for the human capacity to see beyond despair, because I've been able to somehow find a way to dig deep inside my soul and find my true anchors, find solace, and courage in vulnerability, I'm grateful for the love from those that I love the most, my family and friends.
I'm thankful for the unimaginable, yet unique perspective of life that I can get from where I'm standing  even when everything around feels crumbly and broken, the beauty of the true treasures of life shine brighter and faith becomes more precious than ever before"

Claudia Viniegra