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Sunday, November 28, 2010

Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo, Doo Doo Doo

The title is me singing "Linus & Lucy" by the way. I was watching the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special.

I had meant to write a run-up to Thanksgiving post, then I was going to write an actual Thanksgiving post. And...then it was going to be a review of my Thanksgiving. So now its sunday night and I'm finally updating. And really I've been putting off all these Thanksgiving themed posts not so much out of laziness (though that certainly had a lot to do with it) but that Thanksgiving really doesn't mean anything to me. I realize of course, that after watching Charlie Brown I didn't come away with the appropriate moral reaction I was supposed to, but whatever. I get it that Thanksgiving is the time that you spend time with friends and family and that this when you should be mindful of all your own blessings. It is the time to be thankful for all that in your life which you typically forget is special. I understand that much, and despite all the cliche and all the commercialism and gluttony and so on, and that Thanksgiving can be a meaningful and beautiful holiday.

My problem with all this is tha I've never had that Thanksgiving. Due to a series of unexpected circumstances, I spent this Thanksgiving with my mother, my sister, her husband, my aunt and her seven year old daughter. This was the largest, most familial Thanksgiving I've had in years. For nearly a decade prior my Thanksgiving has consisted of me, my mom, and my sister (starting two years ago her boyfriend/fiancee/husband has been a part of it). As to my being thankful for the things and people in my life, its something I've always had trouble with and so its something that I remind myself of often. I find it a fleeting sensation but a near-constant mental exercise for me so in that way Thanksgiving holds little sway.

Finally, all this served to remind me of my late paternal Grandfather. He passed away five years ago and it pained me, amidst all this onerous ponderousness that I've given very little thought to him recently. Which is a shameful fact as, likely more than any other man, he helped shape me to be the person I am today. After my parents' divorce, through almost my entire highschool career, he lived with us and was one of the most positive influences in my life during that time. More than anyone else, he helped to nurture and promote my intellectuctual curiosity and my interest in music and the arts. He was a brilliant man, the friendliest person I've ever met, and has one of the coolest life stories of anybody I've ever known. I watched him become more and more ill over the years as I prepared to leave home, and I'll never forget the call I received late one autumn night when my mom told me he had died. He was like the father that I was missing in my life and without his presence I shudder to think what I would've become in high school. I consider it a great tragedy that he never got to see the man I became: the tortured genius, the vagabond, the reserved comic actor (he was alive only long enough to see my first theatre performance). What I would do for some of his advice today.

This year, as always, I am thankful for the friends and family that I have lost along the way.

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