Thanksgiving

"We'll see you soon," I heard her say,
and my breath caught at the lump in my throat
before I could hang up the phone.

"We," and not "I," she said.

But there is no longer a "we" for her, I told myself,
and I wonder if she'll think of that when she
puts down her phone - if the realization will come to her
with force or slow resignation -
if the tear peeking out of the corner of my eye is matched
or surpassed by her own,
if she said it not knowing, only later to catch herself and
ponder later, in the dark, alone,
or if she said it knowingly, in acquiesced defiance,
an homage to the "we" that once was,
an ode to the comforting home she still keeps despite the
haunting absence of her husband, my grandfather, her son,
my uncle, and her daughter, my mother.
And even still perhaps it is a royal "we," and my grandmother's
inner strength has surpassed us all now, expanding, and
forming into something regal, something plural,
something outmatching itself in the strength of such a noble matriarch.

Soon I will be shuttling across the country, toward her,
toward a house that's still a home but aches with silence and loss -
good company we'll be for one another.
I leave loss behind, or rather attempt to run from
the spectres of those I've been forced to try to forget,
or who have left me,
her home now to become a haven for these two souls,
haunted and seeking solace in a communion too long coming.

For soon it will be Thanksgiving Day,
and soon I will be joining faces of family I haven't seen in
months, or maybe years -
all of us surrounding the table, hands clasped and heads bowed,
praying, filling the voids we carry with us,
all those silences,
with songs and words of gratitude and thankfulness.

We'll say a prayer, I know, for her, my grandmother,
and for the "we" she was, no longer is,
the "we" she still says, out of habit, over the phone to me, making plans,
And while the "we" I lost so recently cannot compare
to so many years of faithful service and devotion she holds behind her,
my heart still aches for all the futures I've lost in my past,
as "we" after "we" has dissolved from my arms.

But for now I look forward simply to pushing myself
toward her and her dining room table,
and those talks of time, distance, and memory we'll share,
just she and I, over mugs of microwaved hot chocolate,
pausing between words to hear, ever so faintly,
the voices of the "we" that has moved on and left us both,
as we bow our heads and, despite the pain of death, of loss,
of separation, send gratitude out into The Universe,
offering up thanksgiving for what we were allowed to have,
and all that we have lost.