Dear Mom e-Letter

Dear Mom E-Letter
Mom’s Thanksgiving Imprints
Volume 2 Issue 12

Dear Reader,

Losing your mom means Thanksgiving without Mom. Holiday grieving is especially painful — whether you lost your mom recently or long ago—as holidays are filled with mom memories that imprint our hearts and souls. 

If you still have your mom, I’ll bet you know someone—a close friend or relative—who has lost hers.  There are nearly 40 million Baby Boomer women in this country, and many of us were raised by stay-at-home moms.  Losing your mom means not only losing the one who spent thousands of hours raising you, but the one who worked hard to create many of the Thanksgiving traditions you cherish.

Remember how your mom prepared for Thanksgiving?  Remember the shopping, the menu, who was invited for dinner, baking the pies the day before, the turkey in the over early in the morning, and then, the perfect dinner?  Did you take it for granted?  I did.  But the memory still makes my mouth water.

My favorite Thanksgiving memory is watching parades on TV while smelling the feast we were about to enjoy.  Mom was quite traditional in her menu.  Turkey, roasted to perfection, dressing (I didn’t eat it), corn (of course, from her garden), yams (yuck!), buns (again, made from scratch), lefse (the German succumbed to making this Norwegian potato bread that looks like a tortilla every year for her Norwegian husband and kids), and cranberries in relish I never actually tried.  It looked way too adult for me.  (Sorry Mom!)

But the best part of the feast:  her pies.   One of my letters in Dear Mom: Remembering, Celebrating, Healing, describes her crust.  It was perfect, each pie crust trimmed by mom gripping dough between thumb and index finger, then twisting to form the perfectly spaced edging.  She would make cherry pies—my favorite—and barely complain as I could eat half of one pie at a sitting.  (I earned my nick name: Hollow Leg.) 

What Thanksgiving mom memories have imprinted your heart and soul? I would love to have you share.  Just e-mail me at DeeDee@DeeDeeRaap.com.   Is it her food, and if so, what’s the most special dish she made?  Who joined you for dinner?   Did she use her best dishes?  Did your mom make pies like mine did?

You very likely know someone who is facing their first holiday season without mom.  Or it may be your first Thanksgiving without mom.  That means mom is missing from the table.  The chair is empty.  And worse yet, she’s not cooking any of your favorite foods, and the feast you’ve always known is changing.

Grieving this time of year is especially hard, since the rest of the world continues with music and parades while you’re a sad adult missing her mom.   Please share this with anyone who is missing their mom this holiday season.  The next issue will offer some tips for coping and celebrating the imprints your mother made on your holiday traditions.

Thanks for sharing the journey!

Dee Dee