Thanksgiving. It’s time for my yearly exercise in gratitude. I debated skipping it this year, because frankly, I don’t feel very grateful for anything most of the time. Everything is still completely overshadowed by losing Steve.

Recently, I was talking to a friend who I have grown much closer to over the last few months, and we were discussing how we’d been friends for a long time, but we’ve become better friends since Steve’s passing. While I am grateful for the strengthened tie of friendship, I’m also sad knowing that it probably wouldn’t have happened if Steve were still here. Everything good that happens now has that bittersweetness to it.

I’m still not ready to face the holidays in any traditional sense, so the kids and I headed out of town again for Turkey Day. It had to be a short trip, due to hunting season, winter formals, and sports practices, so we headed up to New York City. I’m not sure if seeing Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden as their first concert ever will ruin my children’s future concerts forever or if it will just whet their appetite, but it was certainly an evening they won’t forget any time soon.

After watching bits and pieces of the Macy’s Parade, we headed over to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes. The boys were a little less than thrilled to have to sit through a “dancing” show, but it didn’t take long for them to get into the spirit. So, again, I am grateful that we got the chance to get away, grateful for the opportunity to check off a few bucket list type activities, and especially grateful for the dog sitters. But it is highly unlikely that I ever would have gotten Steve to give up a Thanksgiving Day hunt to go see some big balloons flying in the sky, and I know we never would have gone without him. I’m glad we got to do it, but would have given anything to have stayed home cooking all day for my hungry hunters.

I have never wanted to be at home less, especially with the holidays, and yet thanks to the dogs, need to be home more. Even a day and a half away requires careful planning and disrupting someone else’s holiday to get those two hooligans exercised, and I was actually a little sad to leave them alone, even though Thanksgiving means nothing to them but better table scraps.

It has been another bittersweet discovery to find out how much I enjoy working with Duncan and Henson. Learning how to handle them has been a positive distraction for me, and one of the few things that makes me feel like I’ve really accomplished something this year. I have taken Duncan out a few times now to hunt, and while I still feel sorry for the bird, the pride that I feel when he flushes one and then scurries through the brush to retrieve is the same that I feel when the kids accomplish something they’ve worked hard to achieve.

I wish I had taken the time to go on a few hunts with Steve. Of course, I didn’t know what I was doing and he would have been extremely annoyed by my squeaking and eww-ing. G finds it annoying as well, but I’m his mother so he is stuck putting up with it. I wish I had paid more attention to what Steve was doing with the dogs, although now I completely understand how much joy it brought him, and I’m grateful that he had the time with them that he did and we didn’t waste one more year waiting for just the right dog.

As always, I am grateful for the kids. I’ve always been grateful that they’re hardworking, studious, and generally polite enough to be around most of the time, but to see them continue being the amazing kids that they are, despite the awful events of the last year, is humbling. Sure, they’ve had their moments. Tempers have flared, things have been said, grades have slipped. But time and again, they’ve rebounded, apologized, and moved forward. I have to stop saying that they’re incredible kids, despite everything that’s happened, and just remember they’re incredible kids. Period.

Finally, this community will forever have my gratitude. Those of you who have reached out in these last few months, whether it was to share your experience, to tell me that something I wrote struck a chord, to share a reading suggestion, or to commiserate about our crazy Airedales, I am a better person for knowing you and hearing your stories. I hate that most of us bonded through sorrow, but whatever the reason, I am grateful for the connection.

This last year has been impossibly hard, and I’ve felt so disconnected from everything around me, but knowing that I’ve somehow managed to make someone else feel connected to something gives me a lot of hope that maybe I won’t be severed from everything forever. I will never be able to understand why we had to lose Steve when and how we did. I will never be able to look back and think that anything good came out of losing him, that will ever compare to the good he would have done if he were still here, but I am starting to be able to appreciate the good things that do happen despite the sadness, often in ways you least expect them. It’s such a strange world, to have so much happiness and so much sorrow in it at the same time.

I hope you and yours have had a restful and delicious Thanksgiving week and I hope that your memories are much more sweet than bitter. Happy Thanksgiving, from my family to yours.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News.