Sitting on a deer stand on Thanksgiving Day is always bittersweet for me. I enjoy all the usual things, watching squirrels and birds, checking out the trees as leaves fall, contemplating life and the anticipation of seeing a deer. If I happen to kill one for the freezer it is like the cherry on top of an ice cream Sunday. The whole thing is good without the cherry, but the cherry definitely adds something.

The bittersweet part is thinking about past Thanksgivings. As far back as I can remember Thanksgiving involved hunting. First with my daddy, following our dogs looking for quail. Later, after daddy got rid of our dogs and stopped hunting quail, one of my friends, A.T., and I would follow his pack of beagles looking for rabbits.

If I could not quail or rabbit hunt, I would take my Remington semiautomatic .22 rifle and wander the woods looking for tree rats. There were no deer to hunt back then.

After college I started teaching school and the four-day holiday meant fishing trips to Clarks Hill. I would fish in the morning then go into town to have a family dinner. Those fishing trips are great memories, too.

Those days are gone. I know I will never be able to hunt with my dad again, and days of looking for rabbits and squirrels are over. Also gone are the huge Thanksgiving meals with my extended family. Mama had five brothers and four of them and their families lived near us. Daddy had five sisters and two brothers and some of them lived close.

Thanksgiving always meant big family gatherings. I was too young to realize the importance of family, and I was always in a hurry to get the meals over, so we could go hunting or I could head back to the lake. I wish I could go back and just sit and talk with family long gone.

I still get to enjoy thanksgiving dinner with my wife, mother in law and brother in law and his wife. That is great, but it too reminds me of all the family I have lost over the years. Life goes on and we adapt to changes.

If you have family, enjoy every minute you have with them at gatherings, not just at holidays but at all times. But do work in a hunting or fishing trip to make those memories, too.