Thanksbirthday

The answer, it turns out, is to get through it. The question had been: how do you celebrate Thanks!Giving! on your late brother's birthday, when Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday.

The answer, it turns out, was to cry, a little.

I didn't call his sons.

I haven't called anyone. Even this - this letting out of air, like a tire nearly flat, that I call my trialblog, is an effort today. My function is purely forward.

J called. Her father died on Thanksgiving. She hadn't called in a while, she said, because she was down. Because her happiness- the mere fact that she was madly in love, was not sufficient to temper the chemical furies inside. So she's back on her meds. She's better. Her dad died on thanksgiving almost 16 years ago. Thanksgiving is always like this for her.

He was in the next room, you see. The room they had make-shifted to a bedroom for his hospice days. If I have it right (and most often I don't - I have it just off)... he waited until he was alone to die.

My brother died slowly. I've written too much on the topic. He went home to the town where we all grew up one last time and died before Thanksgiving came up again. So we gathered here, in Toronto - throngs came. (where are they now?) and then we all went back to that same old town to see the people who thought (they must have thought) that they knew him best -

And maybe they did. But it's easier to be here. It's easier not to go home again. It's easier to keep moving. I'm moving. I'm moving. And there's an empty seat at the table, no matter where I go.

Happy Thanksgiving brother. You were a hell of a quarter back for thanksgiving touch football games..
You never played fair, but always played fun.
I love you.

PS thanks for the snow. It stuck.