Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays have always been a mixed blessing in my life. The messaging that surrounds me at this time of year make it impossible to not feel all that makes me grateful. Although I make it a practice to give thanks throughout the year, I especially get caught up, like most of us do, in the season of love and giving.

But every season it seems I am also prone to a bit of melancholy. As the celebrations wind down the year I just lived and ring in the next one, that I always imagine full of hope and promise, I inevitably feel a loss or a hole in my life. So comes the mixture of happy and sad, grateful and yearning. It is as if all that brings me joy cannot be honored without a reminder of all that is missing.

As I celebrate still having my mother in my life, I am missing my father more than in recent memory. He passed away over seven years ago and yet it is this year that I felt his absence the most. He is the missing piece in a year that makes me feel so grateful.

This year I moved back to Coronado, where he and my mother met and got married, where both my sets of grandparents lived for well over 40 years. Because my mothers Alzheimer’s has taken her so far from me, I am longing for my dad to talk with about their childhood here and the subsequent memories we all made in Coronado together.

I wish dad were here to talk about his lobster diving, his years as a beach lifeguard, his learning to scuba dive from the frogmen at the Navy base. I wish dad were here to laugh with me about the cherry bombs he bought in Mexico and would set off on the street with us on New Years Eve and the flare guns he would shoot into the air as my mother would yell at him to stop. I wish dad were here to fill in all the blanks that mom no longer remembers and to share in the memories that she does.

In a year that I have more than I could ever have believe to be grateful for, I am missing my parents, one passed and one lost in her mind, more than I could ever have imagined. Wishful thinking I know, but what I would give just to have a few moments with both my parents to reminisce about the love and joy we all shared here together. That would be a truly magical holiday!