The Last Dinner

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The last family dinner you have together on Thanksgiving becomes more special as the years go by and you aren’t able to see some family members anymore while celebrating the life long traditions. Here’s a short story about our last dinner.

The Last Dinner

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In late November of the year 1999, our family met in Fritch, Texas, to enjoy our family tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving Dinner. My sister JerrylDine and her family hosted the dinner in Fritch at their home. JerrylDine was a super excellent cook so we all loved it when it was her turn to do the cooking. Ah that golden brown turkey with all the trimmings and the joy of the family being together again. While we were there, we took what turned out to be the last picture of my Mom and Dad with their immediate family all together. My Dad passed away on Christmas Eve of the year 2000 at the age 86 after a botched aorta artery repair job and 5 weeks in hospitals in Phoenix, Arizona, and my Mom passed away in February 2001 in Katy, Texas, mostly of a broken heart. A few years later, my sister, JerrylDine, lost a long battle with cancer at the hospital in Amarillo, Texas. Below is a comparison of what our immediate family looked like at the last dinner in the year 1999 versus what we looked like forty years earlier in 1959. Not too much change for some of us.

 

Standing are JerrylDine, Bill, and Craig. Mom and Dad are sitting on the couch. Mom is pointing at one of her grandchildren. The food is almost ready to put on the table for the last dinner. The house if full of those wonderful aromas of roasted turkey and dressing. The rest of our families are watching from behind the camera.

 

 

The same crew 40 years earlier in 1959. We all seem to be happier here. Perhaps aging puts a little bit of a frown on your face. Looks like we all put on a few pounds having 40 Thanksgiving dinners in between.

 

 

I have included a couple of pictures of our hosts that day which were my sister, JerrylDine, and her husband, Pete.

 

This is Pete telling Tamara a story about one of his experiences from earlier in his life.

 

This is my sister JerrylDine telling her granddaughter Nyssa a bedtime story.

 

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Thanks for reading The Last Dinner,
Bill