This is Thanksgiving week, and again I am reminded how precious life is, how fleeting can be the time that we have to spend with those we love, and the heartbreak that some of the most wonderful people in the world have in their lives.....

Those who have given so much of themselves to help others, yet seem to experience the greatest pain and loss in their lives.....

a young friend, a special education teacher, who was from the time I met her straight out of college taking on a task that no one else wanted, long term subbing in a room for students with serious emotional problems, was going above and beyond to help educate some of the most difficult students....and who lost her husband suddenly on Thanksgiving after only a few years of marriage, leaving two young boys, then 4 years later her brother, then her mother, and now almost exactly 11 years later, the same week, her sister. This from a tight knit, boisterous loving Irish family.....

the moms and dads I know who are struggling with little ones with life threatening illnesses, or who are spending their first holidays with loss....the families who've lost children to violence......the families who've suddenly lost someone due to mental illness or substance abuse.......

the memory that 3 years ago this week, I started going out with search teams looking for a young girl that I knew well, sitting with her family in the times between going out on searches, going out on a blustery, cold, cold Thanksgiving Day with 4 other hardy souls, still looking, including a dad who had lost his own precious daughter at 16 to an as yet 'unsolved' murder......

In this time of Thanksgiving, take time to hold close those that you love, and to send thoughts of comfort to those for whom there is now but yet another empty chair at the table.......