On the day before Thanksgiving, I was preparing my dining room table and my kitchen for the next day’s feast, and consulting my mom’s notes every step of the way. Thanksgiving 1998 was my mother’s last Thanksgiving before she succumbed to pancreatic cancer on the following Easter Sunday, at the age of 56. Young. Not fair. I miss her every single day. The holidays are especially bittersweet, but I am 1,000% sure that my mother would not want me to be sad. I know this because I am a mom, and I would never want my own kids to spend their holidays in a glum and heartsick state of mind when I’m not around anymore. I want them to be happy, to celebrate, to carry on our family traditions, and to think of me and my quirks with a smile in their hearts.

And so, on the day before Thanksgiving, I opened up the menus and recipes and notes from my mom and embraced the memories with a contented heart. I lit some autumn-scented candles and tuned my satellite radio to “70s on 7” which never fails to take me back in time to a really happy place: My childhood and teen years. I was then transported back to our eat-in kitchen with the dark oak cabinets, Harvest Gold appliances, and tidy linoleum floors, all the rage at the time. My siblings and I grew up with our mom, aunt, and/or grandmother always in a kitchen – their kitchens, the neighbor’s, other friend’s or family’s kitchens. If there was a kitchen around, you would find Mom, Auntie, and/or Nana in it. As all of us who have Italian moms, aunties, and grandmothers know, this is a really good and happy combination with delicious end results.

Our family traditions have not changed over the decades. They’ve been tweaked, but the foundation is the same. The week of my mom’s last Thanksgiving in 1998 found us in her kitchen. With my five-month-old son napping in the bedroom, Mom and I began the turkey, stuffing, and side dish preparations. After happily chatting and working our way through the morning, chemo was getting the best of her and Mom finally had to sit on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, exhausted, and just direct me. I didn’t really need direction; this preparation has been the same my entire life and I know it by heart. It’s all I know, in fact. But on this particular day, with my mother’s body failing and her future health uncertain, I could sense that it meant everything to her to especially have this Thanksgiving prep day together. So I did as she gently directed from her kitchen chair perch, wrote things down for posterity, absorbed every tip, asked questions, enjoyed every minute of that entire day, laughed with her and held it together when I really just wanted to cry. That was 16 Thanksgivings ago, our last together, and it feels like yesterday.

So now the holidays are upon us again, and again my mom is not here. But I can feel her presence. I know that she was in the kitchen with me and my ’70s music and my autumn-scented candles on Wednesday. She would have had the Three Tenors playing and candles lit, too. I sang out loud to the soundtrack of my childhood while I made my way through the preparations, thought of her and times past when she was teaching me recipes, smiled at the memories. I looked at the recipes and menus and notes, some in my mom’s own beautiful penmanship, not necessarily out of need but rather for comforting reassurance and memories. It was a good day. I felt lighthearted and peaceful. I felt my mother near me.

I know my mom would have loved my table this Thanksgiving –  shopping for and setting the table for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter was one of our favorite things to do.

I know my mom would be proud of how my sister, brother and I have carried on the family holiday traditions (except for the lima beans – sorry, Mom), and how we’re teaching my sons by example. I know she’d be proud of my son, who has learned to make perfect pizzelles, just like her. She’d be so pleased with the care that we take when unpacking and hanging her beloved and very fragile teapot Christmas tree ornament, which has now survived every single one of its 55 years without the slightest mishap. She’d love how my sister and I still make a beautiful antipasta on her old but still shiny square silver tray, how my brother still brings good wine and good cheer, how we all traveled across the pond in order to be together and celebrate Christmas and New Year’s the year that my brother transferred with his job. She’d love how, after Christmas Eve dinner, we bring out the big silver cookie tray of our childhood, overflowing with biscotti, pizzelles, church windows, silver tops, and more – dotted with the red and green Andes candies and silver-wrapped Hershey Kisses for festive color like she taught me, and always baked with love from our decades-old family recipes.

I do miss my mom every single day of my life, and following the traditions that were so dear to her and that were the fabric of our childhood is a way to celebrate and honor her. It’s a way of remembering her endearing quirks, visualizing her smile, hearing her voice, and remembering – and still taking – her knowing advice. I can then hear her laughter, I can see her smiling blue eyes. And when her quirks, her smile, her voice and laughter, and her advice are alive and vividly running through my mind like that, I smile and I know that she’s all around me, like my own special angel. Surely she must be cringing sometimes (like when my brother amusingly discovered that I roasted the turkey with the giblet bag still inside – oops), but I know that she’s watching over me with an immense smile, pleased that her daughter has turned out okay in the 16 years without her – and is very much her mother’s daughter.

What was lovely about today: With the end of Thanksgiving weekend here, I especially enjoyed the bit of Christmas shopping that I did today, and I enjoyed anticipating Christmas in all of its decorative glory as I put away the Thanksgiving and Fall decorations and putzed around the house. It was a productive but peaceful and quiet day and I can still feel my mom here with me. She’d be putzing around on this final day of this long weekend, too, probably still in her nightgown – and content as ever. It was that kind of lovely day.