Thanksgiving memories

Thanksgiving always makes me think of my brother. For obvious reasons, of course, because on days like this you think of family, especially family that is no longer with you, but I think of him especially on this day (he died almost 9 years ago).

He loved stuffing. Fucking LOVED it. Growing up, my mom always had to make a shit ton extra because he would scarf so much of it down. At his request, at some point during my childhood, she added sausage to her patented recipe, and that's the recipe I still use today. It's good stuff, man. Good fucking stuff.

His last Thanksgiving was at my house, with his wife, a baby Child 1, my parents and Hubs' sister and her husband. In the last year or so of his life he had been seeing some kind of Chinese doctor (apparently he was also the Dalai Lama's doctor?) who put him on this crazy diet of restriction, because such and such food causes a such and such in the body and such and such whateverthefuck.

I remember that he wasn't allowed to eat mustard, or poppy seeds? But the most important restriction, in this context. was that he couldn't eat any birds. BIRDS. He couldn't eat fucking birds on Thanksgiving!! So I made a separate bunch of stuffing, not cooked in the turkey, with pork sausage and a mushroom gravy. Not as good. I mean, it was good (because I'm a good cook, if I do say so myself), but it wasn't how it was supposed to be. He gave it his best shot and I distinctly remember him saying at one point  "fuck it" and going for a handful of the "good" stuffing. Because, really? Not eating any birds or bird products is really going to stop a stage 4 melanoma that had already spread to his brain at that point? I don't think so.

I hope he liked the stuffing. I'm sure he did but I don't remember specifically.

I miss him; on most days I miss him, but on Thanksgiving I miss him the most. I wish he could have some of my gravy, I know he would love it.

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