We Gather Together

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." -Thorton Wilder

http://youtu.be/7NSQLMPUK-8 Thanksgiving Song~Mary Chapin Carpenter
http://youtu.be/LA05aiIvl20  Thanksgiving-George Winston
http://youtu.be/xBtKRKM3a9o  We Gather Together~Thanksgiving Blessings

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."  ~John Fitzgerald Kennedy


Thanksgiving.  It comes every year on the fourth Thursday in the month of November. It is our national holiday, when we give thanks for the bounty of the yearly harvest and the many blessings bestowed upon us. In the United States, our Thanksgiving holiday is rooted in English tradition as well as with prayers and ceremonies that we recognize dating back to 1621, and that first feast of Thanksgiving which took place at Plymouth Rock.   Pilgrims feasted for three days, celebrated and offered thanks for the abundance of  harvest.  Edward Winslow an attendee at the first gathering in 1621 recorded that 90 Native American Indians were in attendance at that first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims.
Did you know that Thanksgiving has been an annual celebration by Presidential proclamation since 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed: a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens", and by state legislation since the times of our Founding Fathers?  It was set to be observed as the fourth Thursday in November by federal legislation in 1941.  As stated, the holiday began as a traditional celebration of the yearly harvest.
Here is an excerpt of Edward Winslow's personal account of that first Thanksgiving:

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest kingMassasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

So once in every year we throng
Upon a day apart,
To praise the Lord with feast and song
In thankfulness of heart.

~Arthur Guiterman, The First Thanksgiving

As stated above, Presient Lincoln proclaimed there be a national day of Thanksgiving to be celebrated the last Thursday in November.  Here is his proclamation, dated October 3, 1863:

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

"It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth."

                                     "All that we behold is full of blessings." ~William Wordsworth

~Since 1924, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held in upper Manhattan.  

~Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented the President with a live turkey.  President John F. Kennedy was the first President to spare the turkey. Ronald Reagan is the first President to have granted the turkey a presidential pardon in 1987, and sent the turkey to a petting zoo.  In 1989, President Bush made the turkey pardon an annual tradition.

http://youtu.be/m57gzA2JCcM Alice's Restaurant-Arlo Guthrie

"Remember God's bounty in the year.  String the pearls of His favor.  Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light!  Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude!"  ~Henry Ward Beecher

"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is, 'thank you,' that will be enough."  ~Meister Eckhart

Thanksgiving

Now gracious plenty rules the board,  And in the purse is gold; By multitudes in glad accord  Thy giving is extolled. Ah, suffer me to thank Thee, Lord,  For what thou dost withhold! I thank Thee that howe'er we climb  There yet is something higher; That though through all our reach of time  We to the stars aspire, Still, still beyond us burns sublime  The pure sidereal fire! I thank Thee for the unexplained,  The hope that lies before, The victory that is not gained,—  O Father, more and more I thank Thee for the unattained,  The good we hunger for! I thank Thee for the voice that sings  To inner depths of being; For all the spread and sweep of wings,  From earthly bondage freeing; For mystery—the dream of things  Beyond our power of seeing! by Florence Earle Coates/Nov. 1905 http://youtu.be/SSKIVf0hSn0 Thankful~Josh Groban Now, go and tell those who have touched your life what a blessing they are to you! Happy Thanksgiving, Friends!  May your day be abundantly blessed today~ And, know that in my heart especially today, that I thank God upon every remembrance of you....Blessings my friends, With love & gratitude, Jhill

Child of Mine & Puppy Dog Kisses

Elmer Javier Bosher-Perran

Came to live with us on September 19, 2009

"You are my sonshine...."~Author Unknown

*Please take a moment to listen to both songs; I dedicate them in memory of our son, William.

http://youtu.be/33Zd8fEsQAk [Fly - Celine Dion]
https://youtu.be/8Gwitx5SXN8  [The Day - Babyface]

Today is a milestone day for me and my husband. It is the day, had the doctor’s predictions been accurate, that our son, William David Bosher-Perran, would have turned 13. Thirteen. That’s a big number in a child’s life~it’s when they’re on the cusp of young adulthood. Thirteen years is also a short lifetime, and that’s what we’ve missed with our son: his short lifetime. We’ll also miss his adulthood; his middle age and so forth. Our son never touched down on the landing pad, so to speak.
He took flight half-way through my pregnancy in 1998 and went back to heaven, from where he came. He trailblazed it back. He was our little shooting star miracle, and he was a miracle, if only for that brief moment. Who knows why it happened? Perhaps, he heard the news on television through my stomach one night and thought to himself, "No way do I want to be a part of that! Sorry, guys, but I am outa here!"
If that was the case, really, who could blame him? It’s a tough world we live in, and it gets tougher by the year. Vitriolic. Harsh. Maddening. I worry about the children growing up in this cesspool of disagreement, stalemate, and bleakness. I worry about their futures. I don’t have to worry about it for my children, however. Is that a blessing? If I’m honest, which I always try to be, I’d say it was a mixed one. Nonetheless, I would have liked the chance to try and give them both a good life - to parent; to teach; to nurture them. I would have liked to have left some legacy behind that said Tom and I were here, that we loved each other...
Something greater than me had other plans. The doctors said my body fought like hell [their words] to keep William viable. There was a modicum of comfort in that thought, at least. Still, it didn’t escape me that the only tug-of-war I got to have with my child, is one that I lost. I never was very athletic. But, I am very philosophical. He wasn’t meant to live here with us. I don’t know what he was meant to do? The lesson of him coming and going like that, is something that I haven’t quite figured out, and I probably never will. Trust me, it haunts me sometimes...
In any event, losing my sweet William was the first of two such blows for my husband and I. I’ve taken some hard knocks in my life, but that’s one I’ve never fully risen from. It was a brutal hit. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I don’t think the greatest boxers in the world could get up from a blow like that. It not an attempt at grandiosity. Anyone who’s gone through this, will tell you the same thing. It’s brutal and devastating! And, there’s a lot more upset involved than not getting a big, solid gold, bejeweled belt at the end of the go-round. Unlike boxers, though, mothers and fathers who’ve lost their children through miscarriage and stillbirth know how it feels to simultaneously have the stuffing knocked out of us, while the rug is yanked out from beneath us for good measure. I mean, common wisdom would dictate that if the cosmos is going to level you flat like that, the world, at least as we know it, should shatter. Losing William felt just like that... There was a shattering of hopes and dreams.
I think a lot about that sometimes: why some people who desperately want children are deprived of them? Why others, who could care less about them and treat them like garbage; who toss them into a bag with duct tape over their mouths and bury them in the woods behind their houses, in cold, shallow graves with no markers, as if they were nothing more than an unworthy, inconvenience, are allowed to even have them in the first place? It’s a mystery. On the fairness scale it teeters somewhere below the zero mark. But, such is life. It’s filled with cruel ironies and unfair disadvantages and bitter pills...
The loss of William and his sister, three years later, are my bitter pills in this lifetime. They are my regrets – my do-over wishes...you know, the wishes one makes when they fail at something and ask for a do-over, because they know in their heart that they can get it right, if they just had one more shot at it. I stopped asking for do-overs after my second miscarriage. Should I have tried, one more time, for "the charm" of a third time? I wasn’t brave enough. I can take a strike or two, and I have. But, I don’t like the words "you’re out!", unless, of course, I’m at a baseball game, and it’s directed at the team I’m not rooting for...I was rooting for us.  I didn't want us to have to hear the "I'm so sorry" words again.  It was the best I could do for the home team at that point.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that life is a series of ups and downs – wins and losses. I’m not good at losing! I’ve got a competitor’s spirit. I get it from my parents. Who knows? Maybe, I should have tried again, but after the second loss, it just kinda felt like the cards were stacked against me–us, and I regretfully told my husband, "I can’t do it!" It’s not that I’m afraid of taking a risk. Lord knows, I’ve risked a thing or two in my life, but I’m very protective about my heart and my husband’s. I know how much they can take, and I don’t think either of us could have gone down a third time.
It was one of our "for worse" moments that the wedding vows we took together alluded to. He never blamed me for not wanting a third go round, and he never held it against me that I couldn’t give him the children that he would have been great at fathering. I remember one time when I apologized to him for not being able to carry them to term, he wrapped his arms around me and told me he had all he needed "right here,". He was referring to me standing inside the circle of his enclosed arms. I rested my head against his chest, and thanked God for gift of him. My losses have been great, but so have my gifts...
I don't take them for granted.
We so wanted children. We could have given a child a lot. [For those of you thinking adoption, at this point in the story, that’s a story for another day....] Anyway, we could have done that for a child - given him and her a lot - love, education, security, fun....we should have been able to try.
As I think of how we should have been able to try, I hear that haunting lyric in the chorus of that Rolling Stones song "you can’t always get what you want...",  echo in my mind, and I know it’s just the way life works sometimes. Sometimes, you get the gold like I did when I got my husband. Other times, you don’t even place, like what happened with our babies.
Then, when I think about that last line, [yeah, I think a lot...] Marlon Brando’s words from On the Waterfront come to mind: "I coulda been such a contender!"
I feel a long sigh release from me, over that thought. Oh yeah. We coulda been such contenders in the good parent department. I believe that. It seems a waste that two children lost out on all that love and nurturing. It is a deeper chasm of loss that we feel by being cheated out of that privilege. Does that sound bitter? Well....there are moments, ya know?....I’ve previously copped to that personal struggle. I work very hard to rise above it - that bitter pill. Some days, like this one, I think I’m more entitled to feel a little cheated and be a little more bitter over this particular loss.
I'm human after all.
My husband and I were talking about William yesterday. Thirteen.
"God!" he gasped when I brought it up. "Has it been that long already?"
It feels like a long time, but the pain of it is still yesterday. Not the crying every moment pain of it, but the raw, open wound of it...every year, at this time kind of pain. Actually, it happens twice a year, this particular pain – the day I lost him, and the day he was scheduled to be born. It’s when the scab knocks off of the wound, and it opens again - gaping open. The longing for and wondering of what we don’t have and what we missed out on are the predominate "ouches". Just for those days, it really "ouches" all over again! Okay, maybe Halloween and Christmas and Mother & Father’s Day and....well, you get the picture. Otherwise, we think good, happy thoughts of our angel, William, who’s making his mischief in heaven and giving my father and Tom’s parents a run for their money.
I wrote a poem about him years ago that’s called the same thing as this blog entry minus the "Puppy Dog Kisses". Our grief counselor suggested that I put my thoughts on paper about what this loss meant to me right after it happened. Yes. We went through several months of grief counseling. Some losses, require a little extra help coming to grips with. This was one of those losses. Anyway, she’s the one who suggested that I do it. She knew I was a writer. She thought it would be theraputic for me. It was. She was good at counseling. Her name was Mary, and she cried when I read the poem to her in our following session. She apologized to us for doing that, but she was a mother, you see, and she understood the magnitude of grief that comes along with losing the possibilities that come along with having children. I appreciated someone outside of our family shedding tears over William’s loss. I can’t explain that other than to say that it felt like someone other than us regretted that the world may have lost another Johann Bach or Albert Einstein or Georgia O’Keefe or Kate Chopin with the loss of our child.
She hoped I’d do something with the poem to help other couples and especially women who were in the situation my husband and I are in. I was never quite sure what to do with it? Perhaps, I’ll share it some day.
In the meantime, my husband and I were reflecting about what this young man of ours would be like at 13. It’s hard to imagine? I like to think he’d be an avid reader, like me. I like to think he’d be great at math, like his Dad. It’s hard to imagine what he’d be like - who he’d be like? Still, we do. We always will...
Then, two years ago, God put something in our lives that put a BIG smiley face on this day. My sister-in-law, Kathy, was in cahoots on this. She found a brother for Chuey, our Chihuahua puppy, and she brought him to us. We met in Baltimore, Maryland on this day in 2009. It was a gorgeous day, just like today. Kathy, God bless her, brought Elmer into our lives...our little cowboy puppy, who’s all snips and snails and puppy dog tales. Yes, I spelled it that way on purpose. Do we have stories to tell on him! [Another day...]
He is a pure light, genuine, feel good, bundle of love. He gave me a snuggle-cuddle after he was placed in the arms where our children would normally reside for snuggle-cuddles. He [and Chuey] fill that void in very fun, wondrous, happy ways. It’s no where near the same thing, as having our children here with us, but I think William approves.
I imagine he’s been up in heaven for a lot of years now hollering the way young boys do when they get fretted over something: "Please, someone! Give her something to hold and love! Give her something that will slobber her face with wet kisses and cuddle with her in her chair and make her think that she’s the best thing since Wonder bread...."
Well, Baby, you got that wish! Not once, but twice. I’m loaded down with snuggle-cuddles, wet, slobbery kisses and little ones who think I’m the best thing since Wonder bread! Isn’t symmetry ironic at times?  Two bundles of love fill my arms...
Then, in my mind, I hear him protest, "Mom! I’m NOT a baby!"
And, I follow through with the words my mother always said to me whenever I said that to her. "I don’t care if you’re 80 years old, you’ll always be my baby!"
That’s a tug of war I win...always...
So, these are some of my thoughts for today.
I’m attaching a picture of Elmer [one of Chuey will come another day...] so that I can share his sweet, funny, munchy self with everyone. There’s love in his eyes....pure love and light. It’s a simple thing but so necessary on a day like today. I’m a proud puppy Mama! Something sweet has helped replace the bitter. Coupled together, it equals bittersweet. It’s an apt description of what this day has become. Yet, when I think on it now, I chuckle a little over the irony, because this day gave me a sweet, funny little boy to love after all. Tender mercies...you learn to take them where you can get them.
Elmer and his brother, Chuey are tender mercies. They both help fill the void of significant losses in my life. They are blessings, and I am grateful.
This isn’t to say that I don’t still shed my share of tears today, but the last couple of years, it’s ended with heart smiles and lots of puppy kisses to make it all better.
Does it? Nothing will ever make it all better or make it okay or empty the sad place in our lives where our children would-should be. But, they’re safely tucked away in our hearts where love abides, and they’re in the happy place, over the rainbow where all things are bright and beautiful.
I’ll dry my tears now and sign off. I’ve got a puppy – scratch that....make it TWO puppies who want to play as our son up in heaven gives two thumbs up.
I listened to my sweet William’s songs today that are listed at the beginning of this entry. Yeah, they made me cry. Elmer and Chuey, however, don’t put up with that for long. They do whatever they can, short of standing on their heads to cajole the tears out of me and chase them away. Then, after they’re certain all is well again, they pounce, urging me to play. I fall for it every time.
In case you don’t know, playing with puppies – well, it’s kinda like falling in love. Hearing them bark and playfully growl as they wiggle their tails, dance all around me and try desperately to lick my face, is kinda like hearing angels laughing from up above...and God...God continues to bless me by adding sweet - a whole lotta sweet into my bitter...

                                             Picking up Elmer in Baltimore, MD~9/19/09