I've spent much of this year since June 30 cleaning out Tom's stuff, and I came across a longer, written account of that day that he gave as a talk at Toastmasters shortly before Thanksgiving a year or two after it happened. His message, of course, was that you never know when something might fly through your windshield and kill you, so be happy and grateful--and Tom usually was.
Five years ago this morning, I met Tom at the Oakland airport. He'd flown down from Seattle on Thanksgiving morning to spend the holiday with my brother and his husband and me. The next day, we packed up a small rental truck and set off for Seattle, where I'd decided to move to be closer to Tom. We'd only been together a few months at that point, but when you fall in love with someone who has cancer, you don't want to waste a lot of time.
Tom and I had another four-and-a-half years together. It would be more than two years before his cancer returned in early 2016. We spent Thanksgiving that year in a hospital room, three weeks after his autologous stem cell transplant and four days after Tom's oxygen dropped and his temperature spiked to 106.8 as his body briefly rebelled against his re-infused cells. He'd nearly died again, but with quick action from his medical team, Tom pulled through--and a few days later, we noshed on a not-bad hospital Thanksgiving meal while listening to Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant and Paul Simon's The Boy in the Bubble. Two days later, we were home.
"... these are the days of miracles and wonders ..."
A few weeks after that Thanksgiving, Tom would watch his son graduate from college via a streaming site on the Internet. He'd live another 19 months, regain his strength to work hard (mostly from home) and travel several more times, launch another radio station, see his daughter turn 21, and marry me on his 62nd birthday.
Eleven days after that, he was gone.
I'm tempted to say I've written off this Thanksgiving--and likely the whole holiday season. But that's not really true. Last weekend, I joined in an early celebration with my daughter and her dad and my brother and his husband. Later today, I'll volunteer on the reception team for Thanksgiving dinner at the Union Gospel Mission homeless shelter. At this point in my life, it's often easier to be with strangers than grieve with kin, though I look forward to spending time with family and friends, too.
After Tom's death, I started experiencing some serious health challenges. I don't find it useful to post about such things online; some people gain strength from sharing, but I find it draining, so I've kept the details mostly to myself and a few friends and family. Suffice it to say, I'm feeling better now than I did a few months ago and I'm doing what I need to do to address the remaining issues--even as I do the work of settling Tom's estate and as much paid editorial work as I can manage. (I'm lucky to manage four hours a day of the latter, but for now, that's enough.)
Next Thanksgiving, I hope I'll be doing something similar to what I did on Thanksgiving in 2000, when I sat enjoying a plate of pasta at a waterfront restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, ahead of Lonely Planet's Authors Week. Maybe I'll be in Mexico; maybe I'll be in Vietnam. I'll have no fixed address, living nowhere and everywhere (though I'll get back to the Northwest for Christmas). I plan to travel for at least a few years with my portable editing and writing career, and I hope to teach English as a foreign language, too. I've started the process to learn TEFL and will ramp up that plan in the new year once I've concluded my estate duties.
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