The light flooding out the tall, curtained windows illuminates a family seated around a worn wooden table. Simple white china adorns the plain grains of the wood, and heaping platters of food, prepared by careful hands, send steam rising to the glass. The panes fog over, distorting the image of the family to the silent, dark night that settles heavily over the house. From a distance, the family seems to be praying, the old man clasping his wife’s hand and bowing his head to his children and granddaughters as if saying a grace to God. The air is brimming with emotion, and the room flickers with the dying fires of the candlelight.

As the food cools and the fog slowly fades from the windows, the scene is thrown into sharp relief. Religion plays no role here. God is absent from the lonely flames that send shadows playing on the plaster walls. These people are clutching each others’ hands to stay rooted to this table, this day, this life.

Maybe if they hold on tightly enough, the ring of unbroken hands will be enough to keep the old woman from slipping away into an infinite darkness. Maybe if the old man can cling on with his entire being, she will stay anchored in this world. If her daughter and son can press their palms against each other with all the strength they possess, their mother will be there for the next birthdays, for graduations and Christmases and weddings and joys.

She looks old, older than her years. The ruddy-cheeked, lively woman who captured her life on canvas. But now she is faded. Frail. Tales of the past are etched on her face. The young girl from the slums of Philadelphia who dreams of being a star. She twirls and laughs and steals the heart of Johnny. Johnny who becomes John, who marries her and takes her from the city to start a new life. Years later, a Christmas card is printed, an idyllic snapshot of a beautiful, successful family with a baby girl and young boy. Even in age, she grows. Soon her house is distinct not for its sweeping lawns or grand architecture, but for her beautiful paintings that transform the rich mahogany paneling of the walls into paradise. When she retires as a professional, she draws for her granddaughters and teaches them all that she knows. She stands behind them, guiding each girls’ hand with steady strokes until the paper is a swirling myriad of color. Each summer, she drives the girls to the seashore in her old silver convertible and pulls surreal and beautiful sculptures from the hard-packed sand in the sunshine. She showers the figures with fragments of glimmering pastel shells, a tangible sign of the magic she brings to the world.

One of the girls looks at a painting of the summer beach on the wall and is flooded with love and an indescribable sense of loss. You don’t have Thanksgiving in October unless it’s the last one, her mother told her earlier, choking back tears. And it’s the last one.

The girl’s throat constricts with tense emotion. She closes her eyes for a moment and feels with all her being the pure love and raw emotion that laces the air. The laughing voices of her family sing out in a joyful and broken hallelujah. She has this one night, this last supper. And as tears threaten to spill onto her cheeks and trace a story of despair, she opens her eyes, takes her grandmother’s hand, and holds on.