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My Parents Split on Thanksgiving. The Day Was Never the Same
The holiday was tarnished for years, but I transformed it from a time of sorrow into a celebration I embrace
4-minute read
Author Andrea Cooper struggled with how to reclaim a holiday she associated with her parents’ separation.
Jon Krause
“Daddy, don’t go!” I cried. At least I think I did. My mind has blocked some moments of the Thanksgiving Day when my parents separated, when I was 11 and my brother 3.
In a choked voice in our hallway, Dad promised this would be for the best. He could be a better father if he weren’t living with our mother. He didn’t always listen to us before. Now he could pay more attention. I nodded, threw myself on my bed and wept.
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We had planned to have a big meal at my grandparents’ apartment in Chicago. Instead, after making his announcement, Dad made the 45-minute drive alone, picked up turkey and sides and dropped them off at our house. I don’t remember eating anything.
That night, a stone fell out of my favorite mother-of-pearl bracelet. This is the way everything will be now, I thought dramatically. Broken. Pieces missing.
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Dad kept his promise and stayed in our lives as a loving parent. But that Thanksgiving marred the holiday for years. A week before the annual observance, panic would spin through me like a motor I couldn’t control, stoking my fear of being abandoned by someone I loved. The feeling would settle down by Thanksgiving Day, only to return in full force 12 months later.
Over time, I managed to transform Thanksgiving from a defining day of sorrow to a celebration I embraced. It took layering new memories on top of older ones and approaching that seminal early memory differently.
It began with a Thanksgiving meal eaten on the floor with my boyfriend, who didn’t have much furniture. He lived in what he called a “low-budget nice” apartment. We made amaretto fudge for dessert without a candy thermometer and had to chisel the result from the pan.
I didn’t care. The joy I felt with the man who would become my husband helped soften the rawness of my childhood memory.
Cooper (left) and her husband enjoy a meal with their son, son-in-law and daughter during a trip to South Africa in December 2019.
Courtesy Andrea Cooper
In my early 30s, with family scattered across the country, my brother flew in to join me, my husband and our toddler daughter at our Thanksgiving table. He arrived at the airport wearing a Cat in the Hat topper, to my daughter’s delight. That Thanksgiving brimmed with giggles as the two chased each other around the house.
Eventually my dad, brother, their spouses, my children and my son-in-law would join us for Thanksgiving, giving me a chance to update my memories again and again. The traumatic holiday of my preteen years became less so, and I found myself forgiving Dad. From an adult’s perspective, I could understand that if a relationship is bad, holidays can be its breaking point. My late mother and I had been estranged for years, and I began to acknowledge how my dad must have felt.
To gain some perspective on my experience, I talked with Felipe De Brigard about the connections between forgiveness and memory. De Brigard is a philosopher and cognitive scientist at Duke University and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grantee.
In his research of survivors of political violence in his native Colombia, De Brigard found that when the participants forgave someone for a wrongdoing, they didn’t forget the event, but the pain of the memory lessened. Basically, one doesn’t need to “forgive and forget.” You can forgive and remember, as I do.
“This might sound counterintuitive, but imagining how a bad event in your life could have been much worse typically generates a feeling of relief,” he told me. That feeling “could get incorporated into the original memory, such that the next time you remember it, it doesn’t hurt as much.”
My dad could have left and never returned or been an intermittent presence in our lives. That Thanksgiving shattered me at the time, but my father saw us every Sunday; he was not gone forever. That awareness is part of my memory now.
As De Brigard pointed out, though, not everything is worthy of forgiveness. It’s also possible to be too forgiving: “If you forgive all the time, you’re going to be taken advantage of.”
I’m suspicious of too-easy absolution where trauma is involved. In my case, the layers of new Thanksgiving memories, time, empathy and therapy led to forgiveness. After accumulating enough new memories, I could reconsider my past with a fresh perspective. The trauma lost some of its power.
The latest incarnation of Thanksgiving at our house is an anti-allergy extravaganza. The menu appeals to my husband (who has a wheat allergy), my son (vegan), son-in-law (lactose intolerant), sister-in-law (tree nut allergy) and brother (who likes the traditional eats). There’s turkey and vegetarian quinoa paella among the many dishes. My family surrounding me feels like home. Dad died last year, and we miss him at the head of the table.
Thanksgiving has become a marker of my identity, a way to measure how I’m doing and who I am at a fixed time each year. I’m far more grounded and have more agency than in the past. Don’t get me wrong — I’m still on edge a few days before Thanksgiving, and not because of the cooking. But now the holiday, the one I’ve created, is full of love.
AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.
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