The Thanksgiving holiday is coming to a close and I find my heart finally ready to write a few words regarding those things for which I am thankful. As with most people, I am thankful for many things. However this year I would like to resist the urge to rattle off a long list. Rather than pour out a flood of thanks and have the importance of a single drop be lost in the deluge, I’ll keep my thanks to one thing.
It has been almost three years since my mother-in-law died. When she was alive, we did not always see eye-to-eye but I do believe she loved me, as I did her. When my family went back to the house for Thanksgiving this year, it was not the same. Her absence made a big difference. The house is changing with the times and the place that was so much of her is slowly becoming less and less so. Nevertheless, here and there, in a forgotten corner, you can still find a picture or a trinket. Or perhaps a note written in her hand. Little reminders that she was once here and left some things behind.
I am thankful for the stuff she left. Not the stuff left in the house, or the things she gave my wife before she died. But the things she left in us. I can find pieces of her in my wife. There are traces of her in my kids. She even left a bit of herself in me. Carolyn Hardyman is with our Lord. She has made the journey to her eternal home. But not before leaving a part of herself in many of us who must remain here a little longer. We are better for it. And so, this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for what she left behind.