Whelp, this one hit home a bit more than I would have liked. I picked this up on Audible last year or the year before (I don’t really remember) and decided to finally listen to it around this Thanksgiving. The main story revolves around a family of siblings meeting every year for Thanksgiving, and we see three different years (I think they’re at least two or three years apart.) The first year, the oldest brother is married with a child on the way. The younger sister runs a successful restaurant. And the middle brother is happily married to the love of his life (who happens to be his sister’s best friend as well). But things aren’t happy for long. She has cancer, previously beaten, but it is back and terminal. The story follows through her death, which was difficult for me at the time because my dad was in and out of the hospital due to complications from surgery and cancer. Driving to rehearsal in the dark and crying because the situation was close to home wasn’t the best scenario. And like in the book, this was my dad’s last Thanksgiving as well, as he died unexpectedly a week after Thanksgiving.
In the book, some of the characters have trouble moving past the death of their loved one. Some of them think they’re doing fine, but they’re not. Life goes on and it changes. We shouldn’t try to replace our loved ones. No one can replace another person. We can simply live our lives and remember the gifts they gave us.