Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving Memories

For years, sports writers would include in the Holiday sports section a Thanksgiving column detailing the things they were thankful about as they followed the athletic calendar. I first recall reading Joe Falls in the Detroit Free Press and then Mitch Albom when Joe had retired. Charlotteans anticipate reading Ron Green’s Thanksgiving piece and have been blessed for decades by him each year. Then there is Tom Sorenson’s post Thanksgiving musing about things for which he was less than thankful. More on that later.

One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is memories. Those writers’ columns are always some of my favorites as you could re-live some of the best moments of the past year. As I started thinking about my 2012 column, recollections of past Thanksgivings began to flow.

Among my sweetest Thanksgiving memories started with several inches of a fresh blanket of new fallen snow. As the first rays of dawn’s early light pierced the overnight cloud cover which had delivered the snow, my childhood fishing buddy, our fishing mentor, and our favorite teacher had all donned our waders and were trudging the trail to Loon Lake where the Platte River flowed through the lake. There, we would tease the Coho salmon one last time that year as silver dollar size snowflakes were still lightly drifting down. The once silver salmon, now as dark as a storm front moving in off nearby Lake Michigan, would soon conclude their life as most of their “classmates” already had, but the last of the fall run were particularly aggressive that day allowing the four of us to catch and release 20-30 fish that morning.

After the 12 mile journey back to the house, the incredibly tantalizing aroma of mom’s holiday feast teased for the next several hours before the turkey and fixings were finally prepared and cooked to perfection. The Lions & Cowboys on Thanksgiving (a time when Thursday NFL was a treat and not another weekly TV game) and a nap would soon follow the best meal of the year.

As part of the holiday weekend, Dad had started having his high school basketball team open the season on Friday following Thanksgiving, guaranteeing a full house for the start of a new basketball year while everyone else waited until December for their opening day. People from all the nearby towns would come. That year, it would be my turn to play in the annual holiday opener and nothing was more fun that playing in front of a packed gym. It did not get much better for a young man who loved to fish and play basketball growing up in northern Michigan.

Several years later, Lori and I were married and had moved to Charlotte. For the next couple of Thanksgivings we would take off after school was out on Wednesday afternoon and drive through the night to arrive at Lori’s family’s gathering to spend a few hours with Grandparents; Mom and Dad, sisters and brothers in law; Aunts, Uncles and the cousins. By mid afternoon on Friday, we would be packed up and be on the road for another three hours north to spend the night and next day with my family before heading out on the 1000 mile journey back to Charlotte on Sunday. But soon, that long arduous trip became a way of the past because at that time, you don’t realize how important those few hours are. I am thankful now that I still have the memories of the rides with Lori and the time spent with our families, however brief it was.

For the last 20 years, our Thanksgivings have been spent in Charlotte where we have created our own holiday traditions with Brent and Devan. The Footlocker Cross Country race in McAlpine Park has become a big part of that holiday tradition, with set up during the day on Friday and final prep at the race hotel headquarters that night. Long before first light on Saturday morning, we are back in the park as we host some 3500 athletes from Texas to Maryland over the day’s races before breaking everything down and cleaning up the park to the point that by late afternoon on Saturday there are very little clues of the celebration that had gone on there for the previous eight hours. A post meet burger with the McAfees, Princes, Demies, and few other coaches and meet workers always concludes the festivities. I am thankful for those family traditions and friends too.

This season we will not be participating in the race festival for the first time since 1991 and cooking our own turkey and treats. Brent has concluded his studies at NC State, while Devan is a junior at Western Carolina. Soon they too will start their own traditions. But this year, Lori and I with Brent will pick up Devan when his Tuesday night class has concluded and will drive through the night once again to spend a Thanksgiving with family. Gone is Grandma Delia who passed 10 years ago at age 99, and Grandpa Earl who died in 2011 after 107 years of life. Lori’s daddy Lyle is also no longer with us after cancer took him in 2003. At least I still have memories of them, and for that I am thankful.

But this year’s Thanksgiving will be different and difficult. We are going to visit with Lori’s younger sister Gail, who is dealing, the best she can, with stage four kidney and bone cancer. She has endured surgeries to remove a kidney and cut away tumors from her spine to relieve some of the paralysis that they had caused. We are thankful that Gail is still with us and that we have a chance to be with her. Will there be a turkey and dressing is still unclear at this time. And while I will not be in Charlotte to enjoy Tom’s post Thanksgiving rant, I can hear some of it in my head.

I am not thankful for the cancer that is tearing apart Gail’s body and will soon end her life at an all too short 46 years. I am not thankful that Gail’s oldest son Justin, a senior this year, will most likely not have his mother present for his high school graduation. I am not thankful that Justin’s brother Noah, a freshman, will not have a chance to share his coming life experiences with his mom. I am not thankful that Noah’s younger three year old sister Hanna Grace will lose the most important and critical person to her in her short life. I am not thankful that Gail’s husband Jim, who himself was orphaned as a young teen, faces selling the family business and losing his best friend while past nightmares haunt his current torments. I not thankful for the miles that separate Lori and her sister, nor the tears of desperation and despair she sheds.

I was reminded this week that even in distress I should be thankful for all things because
“suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces, hope, and hope will not disappoint us.” (Rom 5:3b-4). That is hard to remember and do, especially this year. Gratefully then, I am thankful for Paul’s words for “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Rom 8:35, 37)

Now, like the Coho, Gail is in final days of her life. I suspect that she, like the salmon of my youth, will give us a final thrill if it be nothing more than a smile to remember.

That’s why I am especially thankful for memories this year.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

MINCMI.............WOW!!!

That was brilliant and beautiful! I am at a loss for words.

Thanks for sharing, man.

God bless you and yours.

 

I am thankful for having the opportunity to read that tonight - a beautiful tribute.

 

Epilogue

It was unusually warm for a Thanksgiving morning in Michigan. The overnight low was just 44, some three degrees above the normal high for that date. By mid afternoon the thermometer records a new record high of 62. That warmth would be fleeting, as a north wind would be howling before morning light with snow crystals stinging your face when you stepped out into the elements.

Brent and I were up early Thanksgiving morning. After baking pies the previous evening we were back in the kitchen preparing the Thanksgiving meal. Soon family and friends began to arrive as we all waited for the guest of honor, Gail.

Gail had been in the Bay Medical Rehab Center since she was deemed well enough to be moved from ICU after surgery to cut away some of the tumors that had compressed her spinal cord and caused paralysis. She had been working hard long hours each day to regain the use of her arms and legs. In fact, she would chastise her physical therapists for not pushing her harder so she could go home, but for Thanksgiving, she was granted a “pass” for several hours to leave the center where she would share Thanksgiving with her family.

Early this week, Gail had progressed to the point where she learned that she would be discharged from the rehab center to continue her therapy on an outpatient basis. On Friday she returned to the farm house that has been her home for the majority of her life and had her children return too from Grandma and others with her. That warmth would be fleeting. By Saturday evening a “north wind” would be howling and before morning’s light, Gail would be gone. A lot less of a sting on the face and more like a kick in the gut, as Lori tells it.

Late Saturday evening following Thanksgiving, Lori would share with Gail and her son Noah what turned out to be their last time together. Her face swollen from steroids, her body full of tumors and ravaged by cancer, with pain as constant companion, Gail shared a smile. Thankfully because it was digitally captured, it is easier to remember.





Romans 8:24-25 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Gail Grigg Dockery – 9/4/65 – 12/2/12

Daughter of Lyle and Pauline;
Sister of Lori and Robin;
Wife of Jim
Mom of Justin, Noah and Hanna

 

Thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. The Tewells