Meghan McCain Remembers Late Dad on His 'Favorite Holiday,' Thanksgiving: 'I Miss You Terribly'

"Happy Thanksgiving Dad, wherever you are," Meghan McCain wrote to mark her father's "favorite holiday," three months after his death

Photo: Meghan McCain Instagram; Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Meghan McCain is processing her grief on her first Thanksgiving without her father.

“Today is your favorite holiday,” she wrote on Instagram on Thursday as a tribute to Sen. John McCain, who died in August at age 81. “Happy Thanksgiving Dad, wherever you are.”

“I miss you terribly,” the co-host of The View, 34,continued. “And to everyone else who this holiday is hard for – you are not alone, I am thinking of all of you.”

In the accompanying slideshow of casual snapshots, the late war hero and politician is seen preparing a turkey in a vat, grinning next to a feast of food and reading the newspaper on a deck.

John took a hands-on approach to the holiday. In 2016, he posted a photo of himself on Facebook in which he donned oven mitts to handle a turkey.

“It’s not #Thanksgiving at our family’s house without fried turkey!” he captioned the picture. “Happy Thanksgiving to all!”

On the late senator’s final Thanksgiving, in 2017, just days after his daughter tied the knot with Ben Domenech, John was wrapped up in deep-frying seven turkeys.

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“It’s about a four- or five-hour operation,” he told PEOPLE, noting that “one of the important parts is to marinate the turkey at least a day ahead of time.”

“He was handing out orders quite well,” John’s wife, Cindy McCain, said then. “He wanted it done a certain way, and so we had all the boys [helping].”

Since her father’s passing, Meghan has been open about her sorrow and how she is healing.

On Oct. 29, in response to another message about why she continued to discuss how much she missed her father, Meghan wrote on Twitter, “There are many of us who are in grief … But it makes me feel less alone and hopefully others less alone to share the grief process that is still so taboo to some.”

Earlier in November, marking 84 days since John’s death, she said on Instagram, “I want to tell you about everything and get your opinion on everything – just like we used to do. I don’t know how you go from talking to someone seven times a day to never.”

“It is still so indescribably surreal to go through the motions of life without sharing all of it with you – like some awful parallel universe I fell into,” Meghan wrote. “The pain of missing you and the grief that comes with it continues to be sharp and primal.”