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Thanksgiving 2015. My parents had split up after 34 years. My mom had moved to Texas by that point. It was my dad's first Thanksgiving alone in the home that had housed an entire family for 30 years. It had been an empty nest for eight years at the point, as my siblings and I are all grizzled adults with our own lives, but it was still the family home.
I went over and cooked a 40 ounce rib roast on the grill, along with a few cornish game hens and a few other sides. We spent most of the day sitting in our customary silence. He broke off around 6 to watch the news. I got my camera and walked around the yard that had sparked so many evenings and memories, but it seemed smaller now, sadder, more disheveled. I wasn't really upset about my parents getting a divorced, they had stopped loving each other a decade before. If anything, a divorce was a good thing, a fresh start. What got me was the sense that the family had dissolved so easily, like we were all adrift on a sea and the currents had quietly pulled our rafts miles apart before we even knew what had happened. Now I just see some old dead grass from the lawn my dad tried to plant and the cinder blocks for a porch that never got built and old, cracked hoses long left to neglect. The sun is setting and there's not much light left in the day. Soon it'll be time to go back inside, but inside isn't my home. I'll gather my belongings and wish my dad a happy thanksgiving and drive back to my own home with my own life and leave him in the darkness.
