“How can I possibly be thankful for anything anymore?”

The thought constantly raced through my head in the days before the first Thanksgiving after the death of my 4-year-old daughter, Margareta. My husband and I had managed to skip Halloween completely that year. But the anticipation of the first big family holiday in the aftermath of Margareta’s death was overwhelming.

I discussed the anxiety with my grief counselor. What should I do? Should I accept my brother and sister-in-law’s invitation to Thanksgiving dinner? What if I burst into tears at the Thanksgiving table? Worse yet, what if I developed a full-blown panic attack?

And there was no way I was going to participate in the Thanksgiving tradition of going around the table saying what we were thankful for.

NOTHING! There was nothing I was thankful for. In fact I was the absolute opposite of thankful. My daughter was dead, and never coming back.

My counselor gave me helpful suggestions. I could talk to my brother and sister-in-law and let them know that I preferred a small gathering over a big one. She said I should request that we not say what we were thankful for that year. She also suggested I sit in a chair closest to a door where I could quietly excuse myself and leave if I started to panic or cry. The advice alleviated some of my anxiety.

The first Thanksgiving went rather uneventfully. I managed to get through it unscathed.

In the years since, our family has often opted for non-traditional Thanksgiving venues.

We’ve taken our other children skiing or to amusement parks. In those cases, Thanksgiving dinner was eaten unceremoniously at restaurants. Other times, we’ve participated in smaller traditional Thanksgiving dinners with relatives. We still don’t say what we’re thankful for. More recently, we’re able to have smaller celebrations with family.

I’m much better at dealing with holidays these days. But they’re still painful reminders that for the rest of my life, my daughter will remain missing from all our family events.

The holidays get easier to handle as the years go on. The gaping wound has closed over the years, but the scar of a broken heart will last forever. Intense pain has been replaced by a quiet longing for my daughter. Rather than focusing on the devastating pain of her death, I’ll keep trying to learn to focus on the joy her short life brought us – and for that, I am truly thankful.