Thanksgiving Message

Arron and Olivia, Thanksgiving 1995

The panini’s had been ordered, and I had just gotten up to grab my “Blue Velvet,” a tea latte. A woman sitting at a table next to ours, asked “Did your boyfriend or husband die recently?” 

Here we go again, I thought.

Not recently,” I said. “And it was my husband. And it wasn’t recently.” 

She introduced herself as Lisa, told me she didn’t usually do this sort of thing, but that she was a psychic and had a message from my husband.

“He described you perfectly, so I knew it was you right away,” she said. “I was just driving along, and he told me I had to go to Luna Café and meet you. He had a message for you. Honestly, this has never happened before. I am new to this. I won’t charge you if you are interested in hearing his message.”

Arron’s mother was at the next table with the kids. I knew she would not take to this at all. She would immediately call bulls*&t. Perhaps she is more pragmatic than I am. Perhaps I am just gullible. Perhaps I just want to believe so much that my husband is out there somewhere. 

Of course, I immediately sat down with this woman, much to the bewilderment of my family at the next table.

Arron and our daughter, on the tiny couch, 1996

“Was Thanksgiving significant in some way?” she asked.

I thought of all the Canadian Thanksgivings we celebrated with friends, putting together mini sets of Lego afterward, that became our tradition. I remembered Arron in a turkey coma sprawled on the tiny couch we had purchased when first arriving in the US from London when it took a month for our furniture to arrive. The couch was only big enough for a doll at best, and yet we had sat on it together to watch TV, me six months pregnant. 

We held his memorial service on Canadian Thanksgiving, Columbus Day in the US because it seemed to mean something, particularly that year, 2001. Our friends and neighbors prepared an entire turkey dinner for everyone who returned to the house after the memorial.

“He appears disembodied, which often happens when someone has died in an explosion or something. Was it an accident?”

“Um. Not really, but sort of.” I eventually told her how he died. 

She said the things that psychics often say. 

“Make sure our daughter continues with the piano. Is our son having trouble with math? He’s playing a song. Maybe a CCR song? The one about the house? ‘Our house?’” Does that have significance?” 

For the 20 minutes that I sat there listening, I basked in the magic of him, remembering, trying to put the puzzle pieces of what she said into the giant grid of our lives then and now.

“He wants you to know how much he loves you, and loves the kids, how much he misses you.”

“We miss him too,” I said, thinking, well that’s obvious.

”He’s very proud of you.” I smiled wryly.

“I hope so,” I said.

That night as my mother-in-law and I prepared dinner, I heard the song, the one about a house that the psychic mentioned. I have to say, I was a little spooked.

I spent half an hour humming the one line I could remember until I found it on iTunes by clicking every CSNY and CCR song I could find. I don’t know why I knew it was the song the psychic had meant. It played as I was preparing US Thanksgiving dinner with a room full of Canadians. I am sure it was no coincidence. 

It turned out not to be CCR, but by the same band who sang “Our House,” Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young” and the song was called “Judy Blue Eyes.”

My husband was always prolific with music and poetry. Looking up the lyrics of the song, I began to cry, as every word seemed to be infused with a secret message specifically for us. 

Don’t let the past remind us of what we are not now

I am not dreaming.

It’s my heart that’s a suffering (Help me I’m dying)

It’s a dying, that’s what I have to lose

I’ve got an answer

I’m going to fly away

What have I got to lose?

Will you come see me Thursdays and Saturdays?

What have you got to lose?

Perhaps I’m still in my years of magical thinking, but meeting Lisa in the way we met seems too much of a coincidence. It feels like divine intervention. 

As my “Mission Impossible” obsessed husband used to say, “It’s your mission Ab, should you choose to accept it…” 

Now I just have to figure out what the mission is, exactly. The choice of whether or not to accept it seems a foregone conclusion.