Thanksgiving is my favorite family holiday, even more than Christmas, and has been since I was a kid. But now that our children’s four grandparents are either in their 80s or close to it, every holiday we spend with them is that much more special. When my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer at the end of March, we were not sure what the ensuing months would bring, and we still aren’t in many ways. But what I can tell you is that her palliative care doctor, a wonderful human at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center’s Cancer Center, told her that getting out of the house, visiting dear friends with my dad, making memories with her grandchildren, watching their soccer games, having lunch with her ladies, maintaining a good quality of life was AS important if not more so, than the amount of chemotherapy drugs that were entering her body.
And so, she has tackled these months with the balance of dealing with chemo and actual living with the same gusto I remember from childhood. This weekend she is heading to New York City with a friend because “taking the train to NYC” is on her list of travel. Meanwhile my husband Geoff likes to regularly impersonate the old man he will become one day (but not yet because he just turned 53) with cliched phrases and song lyrics like, “Moss don’t grow on a rollin’ stone.” He tells me this is what matters to him as he ages. He won’t get “too old too” fast if he doesn’t stop moving. While I believe there is truth to this, many of us approach the holidays with this same kind of action-packed fervor. We must do all the things. We must bake all the cookies and cakes and roasted nuts. We must make everyone’s holiday wishes come true. We must fill each day with tradition steeped in love, humor, and family dinners.