A different kind of Thanksgiving....

I was thinking in the shower (where I do my best work) how this Thanksgiving will be different from other years. In previous years, my thoughts were generally around where we were going, what I was cooking, to brine or not to brine the turkey, etc. This year will be different. Way different. This year, I'll be grateful for so many things that I just glossed over in the past or just never really understood in the way I do now.

My kids and Bruce? Always a given. But this year, I now really "get it" on a different level. Brian could so easily have died back in July. All he needed was to have been hit by a car after the crash or a big fat complication while in the hospital, and he'd have been g-o-n-e. Tomorrow he turns 28.

This year I'll think about Bruce's steadfast help taking care of Brian at 3am or bathing Brian in the solar shower outside in 100+ degree temperature. I'll think about the vacation he gave up that he was soooo looking forward to, to sit daily with Brian at Parkland. It's beyond what I can even wrap my brain around. I'll think about Benji's calls to check on Brian and his honest admission that "mom...I'm almost glad I'm not there....I don't think I could handle seeing Brian like that". Friends and family that came out of the woodwork to help.....I'll never see that the same way again.

I'll think about the surgeon who removed Brian's ex-fix and how scared I was since we'd never met him until 20 minutes before surgery, knew zilch about him, and was saying the exact opposite of what the other surgeon, we had met, had told us. Turns out later, I found out he is one of the best, in the world. People come from all over to have him operate on them. Whoa.

I'll think about the donation from the Draggert Foundation that 8 East will be receiving shortly. Brian is going to go down to Parkland (on his crutches) to give Mona Frazier, the Nurse Manager of 8 East, the check. I'll be a fly on the wall but I'll be there just to witness it.

It's going to be a different kind of Thanksgiving for me this year....