Gray's Academy

Thanksgiving is next week. For more than 30 years, I have looked forward to the holidays as something I would prefer to skip over. The secret is out. I really dread the holidays. This is my sixth set of holidays since Larry’s death. I don’t think Hallmark makes a card for that, but it could read like “Haha! You thought it would get easier.”

The truth is a bit more complex. Larry’s and my marriage was a second marriage for both of us. We were together for 30 years, married for 26. That is a major accomplishment for a second marriage. We each had two children from our first marriages and thanks to Larry’s wisdom, we did not have a child together. It’s complicated and not somewhere I want to go today. Freedom, right?

I learned to dislike the holidays by default. I RARELY got to do what I wanted to do. The holidays were a reminder of the compromise that is required in marriage, period; and second marriages, COMPROMISE IS THE NAME OF THE GAME.

Larry described his first marriage as his dress rehearsal. Mine was more like an off broadway play that people thought was OK, but in reality it should have been cancelled before it ever reached the stage. This is because my first husband, and father of my children thought marriage had him as the lead, and the rest of us were there as occasional cast members who had minor roles in the production. Thankfully for me, the play was cancelled by him. If Thanksgiving is about gratitude, I am going to start making my own holiday this year about celebrating all that I am grateful for in my life as a 66 year old widow, who is just getting warmed up!

On Thanksgiving this year, I am not going to do anything I don’t want to do. FREEDOM!

Have a wonderful holiday this year, and when possible don’t do anything you don’t want to do unless you know you really don’t have a choice. And maybe, look forward to a day when you will have the luxury of spending your holidays exactly as you chose. You will be free.