Image by Trodel via Flickr
Crossposted at HuffPost.com. Comments not included here.
GROWING UP IN Arkansas, we relished our Thanksgiving turkeys. Mother
roasted them until the skin was crispy brown, and even the white meat
was juicy. She admonished me and my brothers, Blair and Brent, not to
pick at her beautiful birds while they were still being carved. But
where was the fun in that?
I know Mother wanted us to understand proper etiquette and manners.
I know her desire was to civilize us in the decorum of dinners and
luncheons. But in her heart she must have loved it that her birds were
good enough for us to want to pick, expert pickers that we were.
Brent, in fact, could turn a giant turkey carcass into a little
mound of bones. My husband, Jim, and I used to say we should leave a
good turkey carcass for Brent on his grave. He would appreciate that a
lot more than flowers.
*
TWO YEARS AGO in this space I wrote about my brother Brent, whose death
at Thanksgiving 1990 in New York has forever colored this holiday for
me. And so it is again this year. It's not a happy memory,
certainly--but as the years have passed it's not totally unhappy,
either. After all, it's a memory of Brent. He was my soulmate, and
Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday.
I had been in New York for three weeks, from mid-October to early November of that year, and Brent had become increasingly ill: cancer, a by-product of his AIDS.
Steroids were puffing him up, and he was experiencing considerable
pain. His beautiful dark wavy hair was gone, and when he was able to
leave his loft, he walked with a cane to steady himself.
Image via Wikipedia
