Joseph Sabino Mistick: Thankful for the heroes in 2020

On Thanksgiving Day in normal times, we gather with family and friends for the annual feast, watch the big parade early and some football after dinner, before falling asleep on the couch or in a recliner. The company of loved ones and the smells and sounds and laughter make this day.

We do not forget that Thanksgiving can be a tough holiday for many other Americans. That cutout cornucopia that we colored and pasted in grade school as the symbol of our bounty always was more of a promise than reality for those struggling to get by. So, we mark the day by looking out for each other, too.

There are community turkey drives for families down on their luck. Churches and shelters get more volunteers than they can use to feed the homeless. Drivers spread out across the land delivering turkey dinners to the elderly and homebound. And some families set a place for a foreign student or a lonely neighbor.

In these ways, Thanksgiving Day has always been our national benediction, a civic prayer of thanks and a prayer for future blessings. As President Lincoln said in 1863 when he established this national holiday, the gifts of our nation “should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.”

This is embarrassing to admit, but I struggled at first to find reasons to give thanks this year, unable to get past the misery and suffering and death of this damnable virus. My family remains apart, and that hurts.

But if I faltered for a moment, every siren or speeding emergency vehicle or television interview with an exhausted front line nurse or besieged physician was enough to snap me out of it.

Nurses have spoken out during this latest surge, reminding us that they are up to this fight while telling us that we have to do our part, too. Working long shifts, sometimes without the best and safest gear, they risk their lives every day to save the sickest Americans, and they bear the weight of the unavoidable losses.

Firefighters wait in tight quarters for the next alarm and then rush headlong into unknown danger. They do more than fight fires, and because they are often the first on the scene, they are cross-trained to keep victims alive until the paramedics arrive.

Paramedics never have the luxury of social distancing. Everything they do to save our lives is hands-on, without regard to the cause or contagion of our suffering. If you have this deadly virus, you can count on them to treat you and get you to the hospital.

Police officers respond to every call, entering homes and businesses without knowing who might be sick there and why. And they still tussle with bad guys and protect us from those everyday evils that are not afraid of the coronavirus.

While we were having a scaled down or solitary Thanksgiving, these heroes stayed on the job, risking their own lives, so that we can do it up right next year and beyond. And, this Thanksgiving, we are especially thankful for them.