One Day The Table Will Look Different
A Thanksgiving Reflection
We walk through it as if we have all the time in the world, as if somehow, the hands of fate will forget about us, and the faces across the table will always greet us the same way. We laugh, we argue, we rush through routines, play with reckless abandon, dream of growing up faster than we should, blissfully unaware that we are living inside chapters that will one day close. Forgetting how delicate everything really is, how the world we know is held together by the hearts of the people we love and quietly assume will stay.
When The Mind Falters, The Heart Remembers
A year ago, I wrote about my Zia Maria remembering me through the fog of dementia. Throughout most of my life, she would call me “tesoro” with such tenderness that her voice alone could make me feel safe and loved.
Yet there I was, standing beside her as she approached her ninety-first year, and no amount of repeating my name could bring my identity back to her. After her stroke, a few years prior, she no longer knew my face or my place in her life, and something inside me fractured under the weight of that loss.
“She knows your voice,” my cousin Analisa would say to me often. However, I couldn’t believe that my voice alone would trigger memories of me.
Then came an incredible plot twist. Just in time for Thanksgiving 2024, Analisa called and told me something I never expected to hear. My Zia had been asking for me by name.
I could not believe it. They were coming to my mother’s house for dinner, but we were headed to spend the holiday with my in-laws. My heart sank at the thought of missing her, but trusting divine timing, I told myself we could leave early and return home before they left for the night.
Then something else happened, because as the saying goes, man plans, God laughs.
In another unexpected miracle, they arrived early, and we were running late. This never happens with my husband, who is faithfully on time.
Their car pulled into the driveway just as we were about to leave. “Oh no, we are going to be late.” I knew we were supposed to go, but an intuitive pull tightened in my chest. Stay. This might be your last holiday with her.
The voice was quiet but firm. And even though everyone said she was on the mend, I knew better. After watching so many relatives battle illness, I had learned the pattern. There is always a moment when everything looks better right before the turn. I was not willing to take that chance.
I turned toward my husband, preparing to plead my case, but I did not have to say a word. He had already slipped off his coat.
“We can be late,” he said. Good lord, I married a gem.
I will never forget the image of her being wheeled into the house. Her hair perfectly styled. Her signature red nails, immaculately manicured. A soft smile spread across her porcelain skin, still glowing after ninety years circling the sun. And then her eyes lifted, glowing with instant recognition the moment she saw me.
Her first word was “tesoro.”
We embraced, both crying. I whispered, “I really thought you had forgotten me.”
She shook her head and said, “Never.” Then she tapped her temple and said, “This is no good.” After a beat, she touched her heart and whispered, “I remember you here.”
Something opened inside me, something deeper than memory itself, making that moment one of the most powerful reminders of my life… that love stretches far beyond the mind, and the heart holds on even when everything else fades.
That moment stayed with me like a blessing carved into stone, because that is what it was. Just a few months later, this past July, my precious Zia left this world.
We live in between lives, crossing paths with people who walk beside us only for a little while. Then, eventually, we part. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is promised. Every laugh, every argument, every hug, every holiday is a one-time thing. You never step into the same moment twice.
When she passed, I found it hard to mourn her in the ways I expected. I thought I would break. I thought the tears would drown me. Instead, nothing came but joy. Joy in knowing she was finally reunited with my Zio Carlo, the love of her life, the man she missed with an ache that lived in her bones.
Still, I wondered if the grief would ever reach me, or if I had simply evolved into a different way of mourning. Soon enough, I would find out.
The Question That Broke Me Open
“What is the first thing you would do if you could go back to 1996?”
Never did I imagine that a simple TikTok video could crack my heart wide open. It asked this one question, and suddenly I was undone. As if the question weren’t bad enough, it was one plastered on one of those nineties nostalgia clips that pulled you straight back into 1996, complete with questionable fashion choices, crowded malls, neon arcades, and the Original Cookie that tasted better with a Coke.
Now, I am not usually someone who looks back. I like to move forward. However, the answer flew out of my heart before I could think.
“I would go to see all of them.”
That was it. That was the line that rose from somewhere deep inside me before I had time to think. You see, in 1996, aside from my sister Jennifer, they were all still here. The ones I have loved. In the flesh.
The moment the words left my keyboard, something inside me cracked open. Memories poured in all at once.
Nights with my uncle Carlo and our Oreo cookie parties, while watching The Golden Girls. TV Dinners and Murder She Wrote with Grandma Angie.
Lipton tea with milk and sugar on my Nonna’s plastic-covered couch while Indiana Jones played in the background. Summers with my sweet cousin Joey, running through the woods, swimming, lighting sparklers, and trying our very best not to set the mountain on fire.
These people, these moments, these little worlds we built together, are gone now. All of them off on another adventure. And one day, as sure as the sun sets, I will take that journey too.
You see, life changes under our noses so quietly that we barely notice. We marvel at technology and lose hours scrolling through feeds. We obsess over followers and chase the illusion of going viral. We start measuring our worth through analytics and algorithms, carefully curating moments rather than living them. We film memories we never truly experience and refresh screens rather than have conversations. We rush to post instead of pausing to feel, and we judge ourselves through filters we did not create, comparing our lives to strangers while overlooking the people sitting right beside us.
Somewhere along the way, we traded the heartbeat of real life for the hollow glow of distraction.
The Things We Forgot to Remember
We forgot what it felt like to lift our faces to the first snowfall before dropping into snow angels. To ride bikes under summer streetlights with no destination except freedom. To wander a mall that felt like its own little eclectic universe. The cinnamon sweetness drifting out of a Cinnabon. Family restaurants with vinyl booths that cracked beneath you as you slid into your seat. Moments so simple they never felt important, yet they stitched entire chapters of our lives together.
Today, we are lonely in a way that does not feel natural, surrounded by faces on screens while feeling utterly alone in the lives we are actually living.
We forget that when the camera clicks fade, and the world grows quiet, what remains alive inside us are the moments we never realized were sacred. The familiar voices. The soft laughter. The simple miracle of human connection.
I will not get to hug my Zia again, not in this life, not in the way my heart longs for. Yet I carry a deeper knowing. When the mind falters, the heart remembers. Though memory fades, love does not. And even as the body weakens and time pulls us apart, the bond endures.
Because love does not live in the mind, love lives in the heart, and the heart never forgets.
A Thanksgiving Prayer
One day, the table will look different.
One day, the chairs will be empty.
One day, the faces we take for granted will live only in memory.
This is not meant to bring sadness. It is a gentle reminder of the tender fragility of life, a life that is never promised to any of us in the same way. What sits before us right now is a blessing dressed as ordinary, yet it is an extraordinary moment in time that will never return.
So, as you sit down at the table this Thanksgiving, look around and see the faces sitting at the table with you. Really take them in, because these are the faces that will one day follow you into the quiet recesses of your mind. The only place where time stands still, where love never leaves, and the heart remembers everything.
Happy Thanksgiving
Keep Shining
@Angélique Letizia
