Thankful for breath, death and pie.

I give thanks every day for my kids.  For my life.  For all I have.

Today, Thanksgiving, I give thanks to the great grandfather I never met.  The "ne'er do well" that was responsible for his wife's death.  Who neglected his children and did nothing to change the outcomes of his circumstance.

Thank you.

Maybe it is because you forced a ten year old's hand in her mother's abortion, resulting in her death, is the reason I am a fierce advocate for the pro-choice movement.

It could be, years later in her adulthood, when you came calling her (for money? for forgiveness? for...) created circumstances resulting in my b.s. detector.

When you passed on your legacy to your son, who also took zero responsibility for his circumstances... is this why I hold people in my life accountable?  Why integrity is so very important to me?  Why the constant victim has no place in my life?

I'm grateful for you.  While I will never fully understand your own pain and suffering, I am thanking you.  Without you, I would not be me.  Without your absence, my mother may not have been the dedicated mother she was.  The forgiving woman she was.  I'm thankful that my grandmother had so little, that when she had her own family, she made sure they were surrounded by pie.

Pumpkin.
Apple.
Chocolate cream.
Pecan.
Lemon merengue.

I'm thankful that you saw the very bottom of the barrel.  Because each generation has climbed their way up.  Each one gets closer to the top.  And I'm about to bust through.

Your great granddaughter.