So many dear ones gone

I spent yesterday evening starting the final prep for Thanksgiving dinner. There will be ten of us at my house this year. I'm looking forward to it.

I have a couple of bittersweet Thanksgiving traditions. One is to buy a new container of poultry seasoning every year and mark the date on it. Once the holiday is over it goes into the Thanksgiving decorations box to be taken out and displayed the following year. I've been doing this ever since I started hosting Thanksgiving in 1996 when my mother died. We had found several containers of poultry seasoning in her kitchen cabinets and that somehow started this trend. It has been a long time now. This will be the fourteenth Thanksgiving with another seasoning container to mark the passing of a year.

We always make up a batch whiskey sours before dinner. We add a cherry to the glass for those who have died and often add extras for those we have lost in the year that is closing. This year there will be one for our Aunt Dolores, for cousin Joan and for Aunt Mary. I'll add one, too, for my friend Mary Jo's brother Jack. A small remembrance, it seems, but important to me at Thanksgiving. It reminds me to cherish the people I have with me and to be grateful for the time I had with those who have gone.