The Thanksgiving We Almost Cancelled
It was the fall of 2017, and for the first time in decades, I wasn’t sure I could host Thanksgiving.
My mother had passed away on October 2nd—just two weeks earlier. The house felt different somehow, like all the air had been let out of it. Bill and I talked about it one evening in early October.
“Maybe we just… don’t do it this year?” I said quietly. “Keep it small. Just us. Or go out somewhere.”
Bill reached for my hand. “Whatever you need, love. No one would expect you to put on a big dinner.”
We’d already warned the kids we might skip the usual gathering. Everyone understood. When grief is that fresh, sometimes you just need to sit with it quietly.
But then, about a week before Thanksgiving, I ran into our neighbour Dorothy at the grocery store.
“Getting ready for the big day?” I asked, trying to sound cheerful.
She smiled, but I could see the loneliness behind it. “Oh, just picking up a few things. My daughter’s in Vancouver this year, and with the grandkids’ hockey tournaments…” She trailed off with a shrug that said everything.
As I drove home, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Dorothy, heating a single serving on Thanksgiving. Us, sitting in our quiet house, wrapped in our own sadness.
That evening, I mentioned it to Bill.
“What if we invited her?” I asked.
Bill looked surprised. “But I thought you wanted to cancel—”
“I know,” I interrupted. “But maybe… maybe that’s exactly why we should do this.”
I’ll be honest, in the days leading up to Thanksgiving; I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Every time I walked into the kitchen, I thought about calling my mother to ask about her gravy recipe or whether she added nutmeg to the sweet potatoes. The empty chair at our table felt enormous in my mind.
“Are you sure about this?” Bill asked gently as I pulled out the good china.
I wasn’t sure. But I kept moving forward, anyway.
When Dorothy arrived that Sunday afternoon, she brought a bouquet of chrysanthemums—my mother’s favourite fall flower. I almost cried right there at the door.
“I heard about your mom,” she said softly, pulling me into a hug. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I think maybe I did,” I heard myself say.
Here’s the thing—as the afternoon unfolded, something unexpected happened. Dorothy shared stories about losing her own mother years ago, and how the first holidays were the hardest. She didn’t try to fix my grief or tell me it would get better soon. She just… understood.
Bill told funny stories about our early Thanksgivings when we couldn’t afford a turkey and made do with chicken. Dorothy laughed in all the right places and added her own tales of cooking disasters and family chaos.
The dinner wasn’t perfect. I forgot to set out my mother’s cranberry sauce (the one she’d made and frozen for me in September, knowing she might not be here). When I remembered halfway through the meal, I started to cry. Dorothy and Bill just waited with me until I was ready to continue.
But somehow, that imperfect meal around that table for three felt sacred. The house didn’t feel empty anymore. My mother’s chair was still there, but so was Dorothy, filling the space with her own warmth and kindness.
That Thanksgiving taught me something my mother probably would have told me herself: sometimes when we’re hurting, the last thing we want to do is reach out. But sometimes, reaching out is exactly what begins to heal us.
I didn’t host Thanksgiving that year despite my grief—I hosted it because of my grief. And in making room at our table for someone else’s loneliness, I found I’d made room for something else too. Not happiness, exactly. Not yet. But maybe… hope.
Dorothy has joined us every Thanksgiving since. She’s become like family. And every year, as we sit down together, I think about my mother and that first terrible, beautiful Thanksgiving without her. I think she’d be glad we didn’t cancel.
As you gather around your own tables this weekend—whether you’re surrounded by family or facing an empty chair—remember that the gift of Thanksgiving isn’t perfection or even happiness. It’s showing up, even when it’s hard. It’s making space for others, and sometimes discovering that in doing so, we make space for our own hearts to keep beating.
If you know someone who might be alone this weekend, there’s still time to extend an invitation. You might just discover, as I did, that the table always has room for one more—and that one more person might be exactly who everyone needed.
Our Shared Wisdom: Have you ever hosted or attended a Thanksgiving that didn’t go as planned but turned out to be memorable for the right reasons? What made it special?
Warmly,
Marilyn and Bill
Founders of Canadian Senior Moment
