The pain of lost family and someone else’s Thanksgiving (Opinion)

My first Thanksgiving at my beau s family table I hid in the bathroom a half-dozen times to check my watch Can we leave yet Despite the lifelong ache to have my own regular family with generations of happy family gatherings and despite the steady routine absence of all that thank you addiction suicides and estrangements I resolve to not let my dread of others family holiday gatherings show Go where the happiness is the therapists chant And I have For decades But the reality is that there is a muscle necessary to steel one s heart so we can keep walking in and showing joy at other people s families That muscle keeps getting trained Weight trained I ve hosted numerous non-familial Thanksgivings full of the lonely the broken the single and the alone this year for whatever reason I roast the turkey decorate set the table and light the candles It is lovely Often we stack dishes and move to the piano I throw great parties so we haul out all the Billy Joel Olivia Newton-John and Beatles lyrics and we have a sing-along We have dessert and dessert wines and maybe coffee with liqueurs We banter about the best pecan and pumpkin pies we ve ever tasted and swear to make the French bourbon cheesecake someone had in Italy for next year s gathering It is joyful in its way boisterous tipsy unorthodox But it is not family We are not related We do not share private healthcare information because high cholesterol and a weak heart run rampant on your father s side We did not together hold our mother s hand when she passed We did not attend each other s children s births as blood-related people often do It s a meal held on a holiday At various point you meet someone somewhere along the way and now you re sharing their family s holiday celebration one populated by someone else s blood This is the part where you re supposed to feel grateful And there are moments when you do But if your family members are addicted or died young or suffer mental illness or are a combination of any of that you are reminded anew that these dynamics are often multi-generational Addicts take hostages They do not have relationships So if your family is in that pool holidays can only be peaceful with other people And sometimes they are not your relatives What no one wants at any family holiday table is bitterness mental illness or unresolved substance messiness No one wants the sad facts of real life to puncture the bubble of happy shared familial history revisited at the holiday feast If blood is that then attending someone else s Thanksgiving or just chucking it and going to a movie is the default I am hardly alone A Boise State summary says that of Americans experience sadness or loneliness during the holiday season and would prefer to skip the holidays entirely A November Harris Poll unveiled that of U S adults are right now estranged from at least one close relation and among those are estranged from an immediate family member such as a parent or sibling Related Articles Medieval mead bar Carw Gwyn debuts with opening on Colfax in Denver Colorado s Thanksgiving progress season heating up with more folks traveling across the board Mile High Tree holiday drone shows open tonight in new location downtown Have the best holiday lights in Colorado Submit your home for The Denver Post s Holiday Lights map Small Colorado retailers juggle tariffs skittish consumers as holidays approach And that is often the preponderance verboten element the one never brought up but often fibbed about to the others who are clinking glasses cackling and reminiscing estrangement Who wants to talk about being forced to choose peace over calamity when choosing peace means being alone There is stigma in estrangement Assumptions are made faces turn dark and holiday meal revelers suddenly need to take the dog out because estrangement is sad Estrangement is a bummer and especially to those who ve never experienced it suggests the notion that it may be your fault Whether it is or is not the conclusion is the same You are not with them because being so is impossible That is the heartbreak Moreover heartbreak can feel amplified when you re with those who don t know this sorrow It can be so very lonely even often especially because you feel you re the only one My beau and his family graciously include me in their holiday gatherings This is a loving and lovely gesture But it can be hard not to feel the loss of one s own blood not being there It is his daughter who serves her famous sweet potato casserole Those are his in-laws who turn on the meeting and then lovingly bicker In the past years my sibling and my daughter died young In the previous years another sibling died young and yet another the previous decade What if that of Americans who according to the Boise State research feel sad during the holidays did not have to pretend joy-to-the-world at others joyous occasions What if holiday tables and the people populating them realized that half of their holiday table is struggling mightily Is it realizable that the holidays and the people who gaily celebrate them give seconds of thought to the of U S adults in the present estranged from a close relative Maybe collectively the holiday and all the joy-to-the-world memes might hold a tender spot for those with the tenderest of hearts Yes we can volunteer at homeless shelters and yes we can help serve Thanksgiving dinner to those who cannot afford one Volunteering can and does help mend broken hearts But maybe we d like to be at the table our souls and hearts broken wide open guts and all for all to see to bear witness No one s trying to kill the party But there s nothing like a forced party to turn the knife even more I know that feeling this and speaking to it is not popular After all if want it to all be over with as soon as attainable then love every Hark-the-Herald note of it Maybe there s room for both That is what I am saying Maybe the spectrum can provide love and thanksgiving for both Maybe your widowed uncle across the table whose son is in a group home for early-onset dementia doesn t feel up to raising a glass Maybe he does not feel up to being around people and so stays away as a buffer against others group gaiety But he may be up for someone taking him a plate He may be up for a conversation about his garden He may be up for that And maybe from November through January we could all remember perhaps even seek out and comfort that suffering estrangement or that who want it all to be over with Cathie Beck is a Denver journalist and author of the award-winning Cheap Cabernet A Friendship Her new memoir Hoodbitch on the Near Eastside will be circulated in Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns editorials and more To send a letter to the editor about this article submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail