IMHO- let's show concern everyday, Do the Hallmark thing but do real things all year long. While you're buying cards, don't forget a birthday card for the day that belongs to them alone. Doesn't have to be any big things. The senior citizen alone in the house down the street - visit, tea one afternoon or dinner at your house perhaps. Visit that old auntie - at home or nursing home. Consider the cost in old age - buy what they no longer can - special soap, nice stationary (they may not do e-mail), heck, get them a computer or help defray the cost of service for Internet and cable!. Drive them somewhere - a friend's, church, whatever (in my Irish American family it was funerals. I think my dad got points for getting his kids to them, his shining moment was getting us all to a funeral of someone we had never heard of - some kind of connection.). Look around their house. What can you do? Repair, clean........ I loved the idea of Twink recording her dad and his stories. I have questions that will never be answered now. Those who know are gone..
Everybody wants to feed the hungry on Thanksgiving but they're hungry now.