Before we begin: Happyish Holidays is at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis this week: December 4 and 5. We’re live-streaming the December 5 show and when I tell you it’s going to be amazing I mean it!!!!
Three days after my husband died it was Thanksgiving 2014.
What’s a family that just lost two key members to do1? Why, celebrate the mandatory holiday of gratitude and gluttony, of course! My siblings and I rounded up our small children, dressed ourselves in our autumnal best, and gathered around our parent’s mother’s table to participate in stilted conversation and pass the mains and sides that a cadre of volunteers had thoughtfully dropped on our parent’s mother’s doorstep.
As a poor conversationalist, this is one of my favorite anecdotes. It’s so macabre (does anyone know how to say this word out loud?). It’s so truly unhinged.
None of us regret that we spent the time together, but we all regret how we spent it: playing pretend and glossing over our gushing emotional wounds. We could …