Mom’s Thanksgiving without Mom

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

We all gathered at Pop’s house with the goal of doing “Mom’s Thanksgiving”. My sisters did a TREMENDOUS amount of work, and we pulled it off. But, it was very, very sad at times. I had never before experienced eating my Mom’s stuffing with tears on my cheeks, but I have now.

Mom always read a poem as we sat down and before we ate, and Alia asked me to do it this year… as you can hear in this video, I could not read what I prepared (it is below).

HOWEVER, what happened was, as we were sitting down and as I began to speak, “Ave Maria” started playing — we had been playing Christmas music and this song was often on Mom’s Christmas playlists. So, somehow, it came up next on the shuffle and started playing *right at that moment*.

If you were at the funeral Mass and you heard the singer sing this song for mom, you might never hear it the same again — I know I won’t. To me, it’s become Moms signature song.

Anyway, you can here me say some awkward words, and you can hear the music player start streaming ”Ave Maria” and draw your own conclusions about that (I know what mine are).

Happy Thanksgiving all!

– Adrian

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What I Was Going To Read (from Moms favorite poet):

We ignite not in the light, but in lack thereof,
For it is in loss that we truly learn to love.
In this chaos, we will discover clarity.
In suffering, we must find solidarity.

For it’s our grief that gives us our gratitude,
Shows us how to find hope, if we ever lose it.
So ensure that this ache wasn’t endured in vain:
Do not ignore the pain. Give it purpose. Use it.

We’ll observe how the burdens braved by humankind
Are also the moments that make us humans kind;
Let every dawn find us courageous, brought closer;
Heeding the light before the fight is over.When this ends, we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing
In testing times, we became the best of beings.

— Amanda Gorman
“The Miracle of Morning”