Our plan was to host Thanksgiving this year.  If we did, we would undoubtedly be tag-teaming between kitchen duty, house duty, and Eleanor duty.  That’s what we were good at.

We were both goal-driven before we even met, so when we got together, we could bang it out like no other.  Half joking, we always said we’d be unstoppable on the Amazing Race.

If we were hosting Thanksgiving this year, I would be making something weird and hippy with Brussels sprouts and he would be making his minced meat pie that my stepmom requested every year.  He was ridiculous in the kitchen and nothing intimidated him.

I usually wanted to keep it simple when we’d have dinner guests, but he preferred to do something that required 30 different ingredients and precision timing – and he’d pull it off every time, WHILE SOCIALIZING.  Ted had an astounding ability to parallel process while managing to seem calm.

If we were hosting, I would be setting the table with our beautiful china and he would be setting up the fire pit outside under the pergola.  When we built that last spring, it was this fall we had in mind.  The wisteria is now creeping across the top of the pergola and the hydrangeas are full and healthy, surrounding the pavers.

If we were hosting, we’d have everyone say what they were thankful for.  When it was our turn, we would likely say it was our families, our health, and our freedom that we were thankful for, but what we wouldn’t say is that we were the most thankful for each other.  That was our quiet truth, and we each knew it.

We were so, utterly grateful for one another, and we told each other this up until the very end.  We felt like God specifically crafted one for the other and we held on so tightly to what we had.

What we had was love – in the purest, most abundant, and loyal sense of the word.  And for that, we were thankful.