https://griefbacon.substack.com/p/thanksgiving

In the midst of life, death. Abundance is a giddy and fearful acknowledgement of the losses that have come before and are coming once again. We gather more to us than we need as a way to say that we have felt lack before and we will feel lack again. We gorge ourselves like bears ready to sleep through a fallow season, and at the end of the night as the table is cleared there is a silence as the rushing darkness gapes ahead of us. We love each other more fiercely in the winter when the dark crowds close. My mom makes everyone go around the table and say what they’re thankful for; counting your blessings is a way of remembering that they’re scarce, is a way to say “here is what I am glad has not been taken from me.” Any abundance that is not finite is an acknowledgement of scarcity, of what you would be afraid to lose. It gets cold and we go inside where it’s warm and celebrate gratitude. It gets dark so we hang up lights all over the city, the constellations dotting down the avenues, the trees up on College Walk and on Montague street wrapped with strings of cheap stars. We brace for what is coming. We feast when we should be saving, we let the water run and leave the lights in the house burning, thinking that if we can prove we have enough to waste, we can evade the specter of loss. We pack up the food and we blunder out into the dark, into the lipstick-stained holiday parties, into the small days tumbling down to the bottom of the calendar just ahead.