Holidays are supposed to be the happiest time of the year. And for most families, this holds true. But for those of us that are alone on the holidays, there is no joy or excitement, only dread. Society and media don’t shine much light on the darker side of the Holidays. The fact that suicide rates are much higher around the holidays, and depression is at the highest point for the entire year. For those that do not have somewhere to go for the Holidays, even shopping or entertainment doesn’t offer much of a reprieve. Many stores and restaurants have special holiday hours or are closed altogether, with the exception of some gas stations and late night Black Friday participants.

When I was a child, Thanksgiving was one of my absolute favorite times of the year. My entire family would get ready in the morning and load up to go to my grandmother’s house. Her house elicited a feeling of comfort and happiness. The yard was covered with a blanket of golden leaves from the surrounding trees, and the front porch was inviting with a swing and big cozy lounge chairs. You could smell the turkey and stuffing from the driveway before you even opened the car doors. The front door always stood open, the screen door offering a peek into the busy preparations going on inside the kitchen. When we opened the door, running immediately into my grandmother’s open arms, we felt like we were home.

No matter where we moved to with our parents, our grandmother’s home was constant, never changing. Her house even had a specific smell that still takes me back to these childhood gatherings. My grandmother was the warmest, most caring woman I have ever known. No matter what was going on in her life, she was always so thrilled to see me, and her arms were always waiting to wrap around me and hug me tightly. She was always more than willing to listen to absolutely anything I was excited or upset about, and her patience and understanding shaped my childhood.

Holiday gatherings were always such a constant at her home, that I never really put much thought into what it would be like when she was no longer here. And unfortunately, this Thanksgiving, I am faced with the reality of this. My grandmother passed away unexpectedly last year, and she will no longer be here to open her home or her arms to me for the Holidays. This is hitting me much harder than I thought that it would, for I didn’t really realize how much this tradition really meant to me. That’s usually how these things go though, isn’t it? “You don’t know what you have until it is gone.” This statement is well known and often said, but you can’t really understand it until the thing that you no longer have, is family.

A few years before my grandmother died, I lost my only brother to a car accident, two weeks after Thanksgiving. He was the light and laughter in our small family, and when he was gone, the holidays didn’t really hold the magic that they once did. My last memory of my brother was him wrapping me up in a bear hug against his 6’8 frame, and telling me he loved me. (Yes, you read that correctly. Six feet, eight inches tall at only 18 years old.) My grandmother tried to help to ease this pain around the holidays, with her turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes, pea salad, and various homemade desserts, but it didn’t have the same effect. And then she was gone too. And just a few months later, my stepfather took his own life, leaving only my mother and me to pick up the pieces of our once happy family. I have lost over half of my family in the span of just a few years, and I am only 26 years old. I do not have aunts or uncles, or cousins that we are close to at all, and I have no other grandparents.

My brother never got to meet my son, and my son will not remember the grandfather and great-grandmother who loved him so much because he was so young when they died. Their loss is a constant pain that I deal with every single day, but the holidays are especially painful. The problem we seem to have now is that there is nowhere to go to celebrate. With just my mother and I, we don’t cook a Thanksgiving meal, we really don’t celebrate much at all. There are usually invitations from caring friends to join in on their celebrations, but it just isn’t the same. It's hard to be thankful when all you can focus on is how alone you feel. I am beyond grateful that I have my mother, and my son, and hopefully as the years go by, we will find the joy in the holidays again. But for now, we look at the Holiday season as just a reminder of what we have lost, and what we can never get back.