Last year at this time Wayne and I were in Denver to celebrate Thanksgiving with our family. I remember being so excited about getting to spend a whole week with Wayne.
Thanksgiving, Then and Now
It was a big deal because we’d spent months apart enduring a commuter marriage. But then Wayne decided not to stay with the job in Jacksonville and to get his old job back here in Nashville. I was over the moon! (Mostly because I was tired of trying to keep the house show-ready and over only seeing him on weekends.) Last year, Thanksgiving week marked the start of us being able to live together again.
What a difference a year makes. Wayne’s been home all year (except for when he’s had to travel for work), but now my mom’s no longer with us. It means even more to me now that we took the road trip back last year like we did.
Thoughts of Loved Ones at Thanksgiving
That’s what I seem to be dwelling on today: both the people giddy with anticipation at getting to see their loved ones this week, those whose circumstances don’t allow them to be together, and those mourning their first holiday without them.
I’m thinking especially about people like Adrianna, the girl I wrote about whose husband deployed to Iraq this past September. They won’t get to be together to celebrate their first Thanksgiving as a married couple.
I’m also thinking about the distraught widower who wrote to Dear Abby. I wonder if he’s been crying a little bit more this week as he thinks about his wife like I have when I think about my mom.
And for some reason military families are on my mind more this year than ever. I think of the troops that get to come home from Afghanistan and Iraq and the anxious wives who will get to see their husbands for the first time in a year.
But that also leads me to think of the wives whose husbands will not be coming home with their units because they were killed in action.
It’s All Around
I suspect I’m thinking about such things because I watched the movie Love Actually the other night. There’s a scene in the airport where Hugh Grant narrates the following:
Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspision love actually is all around.
I love Love Actually. Wayne bought me the DVD a few Christmases back and I’ve watched it at least half a dozen times –if not more– since. That particular scene always tugs at my heartstrings, but this year it tugged a little bit harder. This is what watching it made me grateful for:
- That Wayne’s home this year.
- For all the joyous reunions we’ve had at airports over the years, but especially since he’s taken this job. (He has to travel a lot and I’m always relieved when he returns home safe and sound.)
- For all the love we actually do share on a day-to-day basis.
- That he bought me the Love Actually movie without me even putting it on my wish list.
- For all the Thanksgiving’s I’ve gotten to spend with Wayne over the past 22 years. I think there’s only been a couple we’ve missed due to the one or the other of us being in school during our early years.
- That even though he didn’t really want to spend the first of his two weeks off before he started back to work driving 1,100 miles to Denver last year, he did. For me.
- That he’s never been in the military and I’ve never had to endure being away from him during holidays because of that. (At least not in this lifetime.)
Courtney Mroch writes about animals great and small in Pets and the harmony and strife that encompasses married life in Marriage. For a full listing of her articles click here.
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