Thanksgiving Traditions

"The big days -- to me -- are always worse in the build-up to them rather than the days, themselves. It's kind of weird that way." - Paul Thompson (my brother)

Thanksgiving has always, and I mean always, been an important day for my family. I can remember them going way back throughout my childhood. We have some weird traditions like green Jell-o and throwing our napkins at each other at the end of the meal and always playing some sort of game or two because the Lions football game wasn't ever worth the time to watch.

Then in 2003 we added a serious tradition. The table was set with a place setting for our missing family member. In 2003 it was my nephew Kenny, who died in February at the age of 12. In 2004, we were also missing Hyekyoung and Karoline from our table, as they had already moved to South Korea. 2005 added Jeffrey, who was then in Iraq, but is thankfully home now.

Yesterday we were missing four members of our family - Kenny and Chuck, who are in Heaven - and Hyekyoung and Karoline, who are still in South Korea. But they were only missing from the table. They were all present in our hearts :)