GIVING THANKS

Although I am getting to it a week and a half late, I wanted to share the story of the year's Thanksgiving.

To be honest, I was dreading it. Dreading the good - no absolutely great - times of my childhood Thanksgiving Days this one would remind me were no more. Dreading not being with my family. Not being with Mom.

About two months ago, I was listening to the afternoon "Totally 80's" show on the one and only radio station I listen to in Kona - K-Big FM. For some reason, I took note of the DJ's invitation to call up and request "your favorite song from the eighties". I thought to myself, "Hmm, what eighties' song would I want to hear right this minute, if I could hear any single one in the world I wanted?" The first song that came to mind was "Live to Tell", by Madonna. This is not necessarily all that strange. I mean, I do like that song a lot. But it is definitely not one of my "characteristic" favorites. It is on the one and only Madonna album I ever owned, which was True Blue, and when I was seven or eight years old, I believe. At any rate, I did not call and request it, because I had never heard them play it before on this station, and figured it wasn't probably in their music library or usual repertoire of songs.

At any rate, I thought about that song. Then - as I often do with many various "things" - I decided that if and when I actually heard that song, whether they played it on this radio show or not, it would be a sign from my Mom. A sign that she was listening. An affirmation that she hears my thoughts, and knows what I need to receive from her in order to know that she knows.

Over the next several weeks, I heard lots of Madonna songs on the radio, but never that one. I took notice of each one, though, now somehow equating Madonna with signals from Mom.

* * *

It was the weekend before Thanksgiving. I spent Saturday and overnight into Sunday with Star and Forrest, on Forrest's farm in Kawaihae. When I arrived, I found Forrest's cat, Blackie, sitting in front of the door on the Lanai. I was absolutely shocked at what I saw. Blackie - who had had a deeply-settled, and apparently untreatable, ear infection for several months - lay before me nearly a skeleton. He was just a pile of raggedy bones, draped loosely with mangy, fly-ridden fur. He smelled of sickness. The side of his head that was originaly infected looked like that of a hydrocephalic, but worse. It bulged out like a baseball pushing forward from underneath his skin, and oozed pus. It was horrifying. I cried and put my hands to my open mouth in disbelief.

I asked Forrest that afternoon if he had considered putting Blackie to sleep. Or even if not by the hands of a vet, had he thought about "helping" Blackie go in any way - putting something poisonous in his food or something. Something that would be quick and not hurt, of course. We had a heart to heart talk, in which Forrest explained that while he had thought many times about euthanizing Blackie, he just kept intuitively feeling like he should just let the cat live out the rest of his days "naturally" - however many or few they may number. He said that - although to the casual observer, Blackie looked terrible and as if he was in severe pain - Forrest got the feeling from him as if he wasn't "ready" to go yet, and would go as soon as he was. He said that Blackie still had the strength - amazingly enough - to jump up on the furniture outside on the Lanai!

As I listened, it became utterly clear to me that Blackie was Forrest's cat, and his friend, and that Forrest knew what was best for him. I completely trusted and respected whatever he decided to do.

Later that night, Forrest and Star and I went outside to look at the night sky through the telescope. As they did just that, I got distracted...by Blackie. It may sound dark to say it, but it was only because it was nighttime, and light was too scarce to show Blackie's malady in full visual effect, that I was able to sit next to him and (at least attempt to) pet him. He seemed so brittle, so delicate, I didn't want to touch him with too much pressure. But even having only gotten semi close to him, I heard him begin to purr, as if all was right in the world. As if just to be close to another beating heart was more important than the number of times his own would beat before ceasing.

I spoke in whispers to Blackie. I told him to go toward his Heavenly Home. I told him that my Mom would be there to greet him on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge. I told him that he would be healthy; a baby kitten again! And that Mom would pick him up and hold him, and stroke his beautiful thick fur, the way Forrest always had before it became too damaged and tangled for this world's fingers. As two prayers in one, I asked Mom to open her arms to Blackie and invite him "up" and "in". Of course, Mom's heart was always infinitely open to all cats. Her connection to feline energy was always tangible. I always sense messages from her emanating from all cats that I meet. In them, I see and feel her love.

* * *

Three days later, it was Wednesday. The next day was Thanksgiving. I was over at Star's house for our usual Wednesday night "Dinner and MEDIUM" get-together. She was in the kitchen, busily preparing some of the next day's meal. She had put the TV on and - for lack of anything else worth watching - had turned the channel to NBC, which was the station MEDIUM would be coming on in the next 45 minutes. She and I were jabbering away, like we always do, listening intermittently to each other and the TV. After whatever commercial was on when we arrived at the current channel ended, we were surprised to see that a MADONNA concert was showing on network television! Complete with gay rollerskating boys and cage-dancers, and Madonna parading around in various leotards, there she was in all her fabulousness and beauty.

We left it on, but muted it during commercials, and continued blabbing. Then my phone rang. It was my sister Tina. I took the phone in the next room and lay on the bed to chat with her. We had one of our typical conversations for a while: talked about what Tina's cat, Sylvia, was doing; about our work days; about T.'s latest thrift store find. All the while, Madonna's boom boom techno disco bass formed garbled white noise that smudged the wall between me and the next room.

With one word - Thanksgiving - Tina and I both began to cry. Our coversation came to an immediate halt, and melted into a communal moment of grief and sorrow. Neither of us said a word for a moment or two, both envisioning Thanksgiving days of our childhood autumns. Our house was always the one full of friends and family, gathered around a table with a "leaf" in it, an expansive piece of "extra table" to accomodate the mass of Love in the room. The card table was the "kids' table". My mom, Nana and Dad cooked the Turkey, and everyone brought the fixins'. Oh God...Just an incling of the thought of it is still enough to choke me with little girl-style tears. The ones that hurt beyond the analysis of adulthood. Those days were pure beauty. Pure Love. Pure Family.

The thought stabbed the air between us: Mom would not be here for Thanksgiving.

In those couple of moments of tearful silence, Tina and I knew we were in the exact same "place", where no expression or explanation via words is ever necessary. When it comes to our Mom and family, we practically share one heart and mind. Tina said, "I love you, Liz. I'll talk to you tomorrow".

As I hung up the phone, I lay back on the bed and let the tears stream down my temples; rivers of searing pain, and longing for the dream of bygone innocence. I noticed that Star had just turned the TV back up to a high volume. I noticed because the sound was a stark difference relative to the silence that had spanned the last commercial break. The introduction to the song was not the album version; it was a strange, but very cool live rendition. I did not know which song it was, until I heard the words, LOUDLY:

I know where beauty lives
I've seen it once, I know the warm she gives
The light that you could never see
It shines inside, you can't take that from me...If I LIVE TO TELL the SECRET I knew then would I ever have the chance again..."

Mom was telling us...SHE WAS going to be with us on Thanksgiving; just as she is with us every day.

I listened to the song, heard Mom's message. Then I joined Star again in the kitchen. I explained what had just happened - and why my eyes were bloodshot from crying. After that, Star changed the subject. She said, "Oh! Did I tell you that Forrest's cat Blackie finally died yesterday?

No. She hadn't told me. But I was not at all surprised. My mom's work is always obvious; her "signature" of LOVE as real as the body that carried her. The mystery of life and death through her continual teaching ever clearer.

I bowed my head and Thanked God for HOME.