Thankful for Laughter and Fresh Chances
Every year, until she retired, Nana would call me shortly before Thanksgiving, laughing harder than she did about anything else (except the time I took her “mail me a snowball” request seriously), to tell me that the Thanksgiving recipes were up at the school where she worked.
Even though Nana worked in the cafeteria, she always made time to walk past the kindergarten classrooms to see their latest art projects. For Thanksgiving, the teachers asked each child how they would cook a turkey and helped them write and illustrate their recipes.
Some kids knew cooking terms and applied them in the funniest way, like “cook it at a million degrees for one second.” Others said to just leave the turkey outside to cook in the sun. Since this school was in Georgia, there were a fair amount of “go find a turkey and shoot it.” Sugar-loving kids added chocolate, candy, and ice cream as stuffing. Many also included very important steps like figuring out if the turkey is a boy or a girl.
Every year, Nana would tell me everything the kindergarteners wrote and drew, laughing so hard she could barely breathe. And every year, I would tell her I would follow these instructions exactly, if only my vegetarian self were willing to try eating turkey.
This year, I won’t hear any Thanksgiving recipes from Nana, which isn’t unusual since she retired when I was in college. But this is the first Thanksgiving when I won’t get to hear her voice at all unless I play one of the voicemails I saved.
Going into the grieving process, I prepared myself for holidays, especially the ones that Nana and I celebrated together. But I was completely unprepared for the everyday moments that would make me think of her - and the response I’ve had to my own thoughts.
I’m usually used to my thoughts being cyclical, after a lifetime with OCD, but I’m still not sure what’s the “right” amount to think about Nana. I never thought about this when she was alive, and so far, the best standard I’ve been able to come up with is “it’s okay as long as it doesn’t overly disrupt the things I need to function, like work or hobbies.”
But I’m also very good at self-criticism and thinking I’m always doing everything wrong. This usually comes in the form of self-talk in “should” statements like “I should be able to get through a day without thinking of Nana” or “I shouldn’t be crying right now.”
I’m trying more intentionally to disrupt these thoughts after going to a lunch-and-learn at work that focused on stress management. Although I knew a lot about this topic going in, I can always use a refresher, and the presenter used a great phrase when talking about “should” thoughts.
She described this thought pattern as “shoulding yourself,” which she said intentionally sounds like “shitting yourself” - something people definitely don’t want to do.
And people don’t want to be criticizing ourselves all the time, either - although it can be such a hard pattern to break. I’m at the point where the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy work I’ve done can help me spot these thoughts, but it’s harder to replace them with the kindness and love I need during a tough time.
I’m someone who has a much easier time being kind to friends and family about things like this, and I often set impossibly high standards for myself that I then get mad at myself for not being able to reach. I tell myself that because I’ve been diagnosed for so long and living with this for so long, I should be perfect at handling whatever life throws at me - even if it’s something I’ve never dealt with before in all this time.
Even though it sounds funny, I’m going to put serious effort into not “shoulding myself” about grief. I want to focus on smaller, more achievable goals like laughing at a memory of Nana instead of feeling sad - something I absolutely did while writing this post.
For Thanksgiving and the upcoming holiday season, I’ll do the best I can to not tell myself what I should do or feel, and instead celebrate the happy memories of Nana telling me the silliest ways to cook a turkey.
Michelle Cohen, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.