The Biggest Holiday

Thanksgiving is the biggest holiday in the United States. Everyone celebrates in some fashion, and people gather in all sorts of permutations.

For fifteen years Thanksgiving started for me sometime in late August, and barreled down on me like a freight train until the day arrived, leaving me drained and physically wrung out. Working for Whole Foods Market during the holidays is grueling work.  It is not without some fun, great food, some revelry and the camaraderie of shared experience, but every year as the day got closer my anxiety level would rise. Would things go smoothly, did we order too much or too little, would people really come to pick up their orders, how many frantic calls would we get from customers who didn’t get something they were supposed to, would pick-up go smoothly? It was beyond tiring, and by the time made the five hour drive to my mom’s house I was generally so worn out I’d slog through the meal, and head to bed while everyone else played Taboo and Pictionary.

Every year we’d sit down and plan our strategy. I say that as if that involved one meeting, but it was closer to 20 meetings. There were the regional meetings, when we’d taste all the foods each department would be featuring, and that was fun, especially in September. Then back to the store to have meetings with all the department managers, then all the one on one meetings to make sure everyone knew what they were doing and had a plan they could actually execute. There were logistics to plan, how would we manage the biggest holiday, and the single busiest sales day of the year so everything would go smoothly for both the customers and the team members.

In 2010, my last year as a store manager for Whole Foods Market, I didn’t work on Thanksgiving Day. My mom had been sick for several years, but that Fall she’d stopped all her treatments, and started hospice. By Thanksgiving it was clear she wouldn’t last much longer, and I left earlier than planned to spend this last holiday with her. I’m sure my mom had that holiday as a goal, she would get to see each of us one last time. By the time I got there she was declining rapidly, and didn’t have much time left. She had planned to have dinner with us (even that trip to the dining room an ambitious goal) but she couldn’t. We had our meal, and took turns sitting with her.

That Friday my siblings and I sat down to make a plan of how to move forward. Up until that week my mom had been mostly managing on her own, having two women who came in daily to fix her food and help out, but she was still getting around, and was lucid. My sister had spent the week leading up to Thanksgiving with my mom, and I think that is when she started letting go. Once that happened everything started moving quickly. It was a difficult conversation for us to have, I think my older sister was still holding out some hope that my mom would rally, but the rest of us understood the end was imminent. My brother and I would stay through the following Wednesday, then my younger sister would come for a few days, and I would return that weekend. There would be a few hours after I left, and before my sister arrived and one of the women that had been staying with my mom would come stay with her during those hours.

My mom died shortly after we left, and before my sister arrived. I hadn’t reached Philadelphia yet when I got the call. I think for the most part my mom was able to die the way she wanted. She was at home, and was able to take care of herself until the last few days of her life. She made it to Thanksgiving.

For me, the end of my mother’s life, and my last Thanksgiving in my job are intertwined. Both difficult endings, both emotionally exhausting, and both a burden and a relief.

My sisters and I rotate where Thanksgiving dinner will be held. Last year it was in D.C. at my older sister’s house, and this year we will go to Connecticut. We are now a two-generation family. We will toast our parents, we will eat and drink well, and celebrate America’s biggest holiday, and I’ll be able to stay up and play Taboo and Pictionary!