Fate, TX (December 4, 2024) – Tucked within every perfect looking life, every beautiful family, everything that looks just so ideal on social media, is the reality of dysfunction. I don’t know a family without it. Mine is no exception. I am as guilty as any of showing all the pretty things, delighting in all the joys, and sidestepping widely around the sadnesses, the skeletons in the closet, the alienations.
We enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving, not with my family. I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit the wistful feelings I have, when I see photos of family, parents, sons and daughters, married partners, children, all arm in arm and looking happy to be sharing the family holiday. This year, we were invited to the home which once was our home, and shared Thanksgiving dinner around the dining table that our family sat round for many years. That table holds a crowd. It was grand! We enjoyed Thanksgiving with the young folks whom we call “our other kids,” the young couple who bought our home (and our dining room table) several years ago. A dear friendship developed among the four of us, over the months while our new home was built. We had temporary quarters in a townhouse close to their new home – our old home and met for drinks and dinner many a night. We came to know their parents and love their dog, Sully, as much as any granddog. I am grateful for their love.
My son and daughter-in-law prefer to have their own Thanksgivings. I’ve not had Thanksgiving dinner with my two grandchildren in eight or nine years; since the year of my mom’s last holidays, when I insisted, we all be together for her. I’ve ended up accepting that Thanksgiving is not a holiday I share with my youngest son and family. My oldest son is not sentimental about Thanksgiving and is usually sharing the table with friends (I’ve been known to cook and deliver the meal in past years, though this is no longer necessary.) While I know these facts of life; I admit that it causes me sadness when I’ve not been at the Thanksgiving table with them for so long. I’ve spent some Thanksgivings down in the dumps, but I get that they want to do their own thing. Some years, the B.O.B. and I go out of town for Thanksgiving. Some years it’s been just the two of us. This year we stayed in town and gladly accepted the warm invitation of friends.
We spent a pleasant afternoon and evening; I was tickled to be included in friendly sharing. I’d brought the sweet potatoes and pecan bars, the B.O.B. spent time at the blender making his traditional green stuff, an icy drink that is popular amongst our people. I did great this year, having pushed away melancholy thoughts and experiencing gratitude for friendships and new acquaintance. It was a warm, happy way to spend Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving this year carried me back to long lived family dysfunction. We were four sisters, once. My oldest sister died at forty, when I was thirty-eight. That was twenty-eight years ago, though it feels a fresh wound in my heart. She lived a life that turned hard and ugly, dying far from family, of alcoholism and drug abuse, scourges of the times. My sister was simply too tender and not capable of surviving in this harsh world. This compacts the years of struggle neatly into a small, tightly tied package. She left us to be three sisters. My hope has always been that she found peace and light in another life.
My youngest sister has lived with similar struggles. At fifty-fix, it’s not been an easy path for her. Her heart is huge, and she holds an idealism that the world stomps on. An unsettled young life, substance abuse in her youth, and long-lived mental illness created a life of struggle. Vulnerable, she is prone to fall into the hands of unscrupulous people and through the years she has scrambled to make ends meet, often the ends have not done so.
The last time I spoke with her was in September, over a year ago. I had sent her a birthday package and she messaged to tell me not to send further mail; she was moving out, with no forwarding address at the moment. I continued to call and send texts periodically, to no response, for fourteen months. I’d begun to make online searches, hoping to find any information. Was she in a hospital? Missing to my knowledge, how would I even know if she had died? It’s a helpless and hopeless feeling when family is out of touch and there is no clue on how to move forward. I can only imagine how she is feeling. There is a lot of water underneath our bridge to each other, but we’d always connected and shared love. After many years I’ve learned: I do the best thing in simply loving and staying in touch. Attempts to save, trying to fix things, providing money time after time, though well meant; can be resented even when they seem desperately needed. Then my uncertainty is: when I don’t continue am I perceived as uncaring?
Calls, voice messages, text messages blew on the breeze this past year, and I knew not if they had landed with anyone at all. Until Friday. On Thanksgiving I was thinking of my sister, so I snapped a photo of my husband and I driving across the lake to our old home for dinner. I sent it to her phone number, with a short message of love. I was relieved to see a response on Friday morning, after so many months. But the words contained were that I am not to call, text or message again. She wants no more family contact. I know she has to do what she must to hold her peace and survive. The sadness of family dysfunction is difficult to express, impossible to understand, painful to try to sort out.
It’s hard to know what to do, how to do the right thing, how not to feel self-reproach that I have chosen every step of my path to be safe and secure, while two of my sisters have lived with troubles that are mountainous.
It’s always there, the loss of two of my sisters. My inability to shield their lives from calamity. My inability to somehow hold us all together. Now an inability to even remain in contact. There are two of us remaining now. We two have had our differences to breach, and we remain determined to keep our ties of sisterhood knotted.
Thanksgiving these years is not what I envisioned once upon a time. My visions created by Norman Rockwell and The Waltons are not reality. I am learning to accept and make a way that does not match old expectations.
Why am I writing about these things? My notes to you are typically about sunshine and colorful gardens, the pretty things, and life on the happy side. It’s important to know; we can be shiny bright on the outside, and still know darkness. I am learning at my ripe young age to find happiness where it presents itself to me.
I’ve got the Christmas decorations completed (almost!) We spent a nice Thanksgiving weekend, choosing some new porch decor items and installing same. We had shrimp and lemon pie at a favorite spot Saturday night, on our way to a candlelight concert of Hans Zimmer music. Sunday afternoon was spent at the symphony. I enjoy the peace in my own life and have learned to balance the things that are not perfect within the picture. As I write, I look up to see the lights glowing on the Christmas tree. I am thankful to carry on my mother’s tradition of making things pretty.
Sally Kilgore is a resident of Fate. She is married to her long-time flame, Judge Chris Kilgore.
Sally’s work has been published in The Dallas Morning News, Blue Ribbon News, Persimmon Tree, and Orchards Poetry. She maintains a weekly blog on her website, SallyAKilgore.com. You can contact by email via her website.
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