CHRIS and her daughters JANA and DIANA

It has been almost a year. Chris left us last Thanksgiving day on an achingly beautiful autumn day. I had taken a photo on my cell phone that morning from the living room window as the sun was rising. The sky was a blaze of pink, gold and orange illuminating behind the barren branches of our trees.
Chris had been fighting a battle with colon cancer for almost three years. She knew her time was close and the last time we talked, she said Zo I do not want to die on a holiday, it would just be to hard for all of you.
When the phone rang a little before two p.m on Thanksgiving day I knew. I tentatively answered the phone and heard the broken voice of Jana. I said, oh honey I am so sorry she did not want to go on a holiday. Jana said, it is OK Zo. Every year on Thanksgiving I will have so much to be thankful for because she was my Mom. I thought that was beautifully said.
It is such a sad heartbreaking thing to go through; the loss of someone we love so dearly that fits in our life so tightly.
I loved and adored Chris. She was the sister I never had and the niece and friend I always had. There has not been a day since her passing that I do not think of her. Everywhere I look in my home she is there. The quilt she made me, the throw pillows on my sofa, the jewelry I wear, the note cards I use, the kitchen items my hands touch daily. She is everywhere in my home as well as my heart. To simply say I miss her is such an understatement. We were so alike in so many ways it seems a limb is missing from my body. I know time gently heals the wound but the scar remains.
So this Thanksgiving my husband and I go to be with her Father( my brother.) Others will come, her Mother, her brothers, my son and grandson. Whether words will be spoken or kept locked inside our thoughts will be of her.
Maybe we will share a story or two but perhaps not for I know each of us deal with this loss in our own way.
But we will be there together sharing a meal and remembering and I feel in someway she will know.

I am not going to write more today this story is for her.
Till tomorrow.