Thanksgiving with Muriel

Thanksgiving is always a day given over to gatherings, and the memories that arise therefrom.  And I am sometime amused by how we connect to one another.  My mother in law passed away about six years ago.  My wife was very close to her.  She and I always had cordial relations, but were never that close, and had next to nothing in common.  The only thing we really shared was a love for her daughter.  When we spoke it tended to be in generalities, or about other members of the family.  And we almost never were alone together.  Her daughter or others would always be about.

But for Thanksgiving, my wife would always be super busy in the kitchen, and it was my job to drive out and pick Muriel up to join us and my family for the festivities, (she did not live far from us).  And that’s the way it went for many years.  And that annual 15 minute ride was pretty much the only time we were truly alone to ourselves.  The conversations were no different.  But it became our little yearly ritual; and now that she’s gone I find myself kind of missing those few minutes, and think of Muriel. It's weird (at least to me) how these little things get lodged in one's brain.