Ode to Kathryn Bailard and Elizabeth Drouin

Death and the holidays don’t mix. I imagine death and her cool shadow thriving in the doldrums of January or in April, during tax season, but she should leave the holidays to the living. As the calendar flips over to November and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” takes over the radio, my thoughts usually start simmering with images of big family dinners, thoughtful gifts, too much chocolate, and great conversations with friends.

For me, Christmas and Thanksgiving are about stories, food, and laughter. I celebrate the holidays as a season of rebirth, the light in darkness, the long nights bundled in the arms of a lover. But the year after both my grandmothers died, the holiday love-light dimmed out. That first Thanksgiving and Christmas without my grandmothers, death transformed my colors, making light into darkness, red into blue. I remember both sides of my family scrambling to compensate for the loss of their matriarchs. Everything was off-kilter, shifted, parched.

Mame, my mom’s mom, reigned as the archangel of Thanksgiving. She ruled over the kitchen at the family’s beach house in Oxnard, orchestrating the food. She allowed her four children and their families to relax and talk as she wielded her home-ec prowess over the lavish meal, working in the kitchen for hours. Of course no one could replace her. No one tried. Instead, an uncle who never usually hosted the meal volunteered to hold the feast. But Mame was too much with us, as our thick memories of her dried up the turkey and soured the cranberry sauce. I didn’t feel like eating that first Thanksgiving meal, which was untouched by my incredibly generous grandmother’s hands.