Thanksgiving or "Action de Grace"

The Campbell family of Montreal will be sitting down to turkey, trimmings and pumpkin pie today at my father's house. They will do the usual over-eating of the various servings: my brother will eat extra stuffing for me I hope, and the gravy boat will be scrapped clean by the end of the night.

Today will be the first major family oriented holiday celebrated since my mother died in June of this year. I can only imagine how strange that will be when the table is set and they all sit down to eat. Thanksgiving is not normally much of a holiday for reflection - in my parents' house it was always a time to celebrate the bounty of our lives. This year I can only imagine that it will be something a bit more.

This past year has been a watershed that I think it cannot be said to be an "annus horribilis". Too many wonderful things happened and too much joy was had in 2005 to completely render it rubbish. But it was a year of extremes. Collectively we managed to bury a mother/wife and two pets, become single again, move home, get married, sell a second car, and go on a holiday to Africa.

This year every human emotion was brought forward, like suits of clothing hanging on the rotating rack at a dry-cleaners; each tried on in quick succession and then switched for whatever came up next: it did not lend itself to graceful or elegant appearance. To say that we are a strong family of survivors is to understate the case in the greatest possible way.

For myself I feel quite isolated from the rest of my family. Things have moved on and I have had my share of joy and despair like the rest. Geography means, however, that I will not be sharing some of the integral mourning rites. I have not been able to walk into my parents' home and see the absence of my mother or see the fact that my father is getting on with getting on. I will not be sitting down with them today and see someone else sit in her chair at the table, or miss her participation in the circus that is cooking for a major holiday meal.

In my home province of Quebec the holiday is known as "Action de Grace" and until this year I never really thought about its meaning. Translated literally it means "the act of thanks giving". It has made me think that perhaps Thanksgiving should be an action because sometimes it is not accompanied by a heartfelt natural sentiment. Sometimes it takes a ritual to force you to physically stop and do thanks giving and remember all of the things that might otherwise become over-shadowed by the negative things we find so easy to bring to mind when summing up a year.

So this year I hope when we all sit down to our respective meals that we manage to act our thanksgiving and I hope that when we raise our glasses we can drink a toast to the natural sentiment reappearing in our hearts next year.