While others were preparing to pile on the pounds at Thanksgiving, I was heading to a hospital to see my father, who had been unable to eat or drink anything, for weeks. His doctors had diagnosed him with a stomach flu, but to me the more likely, and more terrifying, diagnosis was that the esophageal cancer had returned.
When I came into the room, he woke up, smiled weakly, and held my hand.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” he said softly. “You shouldn’t be here in this rotten hospital room. You should be home with your husband and daughter.”
“I think I should be exactly where I am,” I answered, kissing him.
“I think I should be exactly where I am.”
My sister came in, followed by my mother and Bob, the nurse on duty that night.
“Howard, the doctor wants you to try some food today,” Bob coaxed. “It’s Thanksgiving, you know, pig-out time.”
“Uggh,” my father groaned.
“How about some clear soup? That should be easy to keep down.”
“I’ll try it,” my dad offered, “but I’m gonna skip the pumpkin pie.”
He sipped a cup of clear broth, and, within minutes, threw up violently for almost an hour. Then he fell into a heavy sleep. My mother, sister, and I closed his door and slumped silently down the long corridor to the empty waiting room, where we collapsed on the small sofa. We were quiet for a long time.
“This may sound crazy, but I’m starving,” my sister said.
“Me, too,” I said.
“I could use something to eat,” my mother added.
The thought of getting our Thanksgiving dinner from the hospital vending machine — pretzels or cookies, a soda or juice — seemed extra depressing. Then my sister stood up and said, “Wait here. I have an idea.” A half-hour later she was back, carrying a large Shop Rite bag.
“Voila,” she said, pulling out microwaveable turkey puff pastry, premade mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, a pumpkin pie, and cranberry juice.
Jill, our favorite nurse, walked by, eyed our spread, then returned with a crisp white bed sheet, which she tossed out over the low table in the waiting room. From her deep shirt pockets, she pulled out three small containers of vanilla ice cream. And then, from another pocket, she took out the goofy plastic Thanksgiving turkey they’d been putting on patients’ trays all day.
“You gotta have a centerpiece,” she winked.
“You gotta have a centerpiece,” she winked.
We thanked her and attacked the food, laughing quietly at the Thanksgiving dinner we’d managed to make, and toasting sadly to my dad, still sleeping down the hall.
As I drove toward the city, I knew I was losing my dad. Though the real loss was weeks away, he was already gone from our holidays, from our family dinners, from silly games with his beloved granddaughter.
I knew that would be the last Thanksgiving I’d have with him. At the toll plaza, I impulsively paid for the strangers in the car behind me. I had never done it before, but my father had done it many times when my brother and sister and I were little. On the Tappen Zee or Brooklyn bridges, he’d hand the toll collector an extra fare then turn around and smile, sometimes wave, at the surprised faces in the car behind him. He never said anything to us about why he was doing it, but I believe now that he was teaching us how to be be in the world: kind and, like him, a bit mischevious.
For many years, we drove across a bridge to have dinner with family. And every time we pulled up to the toll plaza I’d say the same thing.
“I’m paying for the people in the car behind me. Tell them Happy Thanksgiving — from Howard.”