Another Christmas Past

It's the day after Christmas and I stopped for a quick cup of coffee and some ruminating at the Good Cup in the Grassland community, halfway between Nashville and Franklin.  After that, it's off to work to clean off my desk.

I can't quite shake the feeling that something shifted for me, in my life, this Christmas season.  Normally, I enjoy tremendously the lead up to Christmas, from Thanksgiving to Christmas day.  This year, not so much.

For one thing, I was covered up at work.  I didn't manage my calendar very well, as I scheduled two reasonably complicated mediations (one I was mediating and one that was being mediated for me) the week before Christmas.  As a result, I wasn't completely free from work until Thursday.  It was hard for me to disengage and immerse myself in the Christmas season.

Mostly, thought, I had a difficult time reconciling my mom's deteriorating mental and physical condition, and her new living arrangements, with the idea that I should be excited about Christmas.  It makes me sad because JP and Joe are are still imbued with the naivete and innocence of childhood that make Christmas so special.  Elf on the Shelf, Santa Claus, playing hide-and-seek when we pick out a Christmas tree (a family tradition of ours), decorating the Christmas tree, Christmas vacation from school, family get togethers, wishing for snow and anticipating the joys of Christmas morning.  This year, it seems, I just couldn't get there with them, mentally or emotionally.

This is the first year in, well, forever, that my family hasn't celebrated Christmas with my mom at her house.  As crazy and hectic as it often was, it was my family's Christmas tradition.  Now, it's gone, never to return.  It seemingly happened so fast.  It's tough and probably not particularly productive thinking, but I'm struck by the thought that last year, or the year before, had I known what we were facing with my mom in the near future, I would have savored those last two Christmas afternoons at her house more than I did.

There's a lesson there, I know, to live in and appreciate the moment.  I'm just not in the mood for lessons, though.

A little over a week ago, I took my mom to the White Family Christmas celebration at the home of Jude's cousin, Chad.  It was a large and boisterous crowd with a lot of small children.  It was tough for my mom to keep track with who everybody was and to follow the bits and pieces of conversations that took place all around her.  In the course of the evening, though, my mom called me her husband, her father and, finally, her son.

I wanted to cry, for her, for me, for my whole family.

Last Friday, I talked to my mom and my sister, Tracy, and made plans to pick up my mom and take her to dinner at my house.  When I arrived at Maristone a little after 5:00 p.m., my mom wasn't in her room.  I straightened up her apartment, then walked downstairs to the dining hall.  Sure enough, she was there, sitting contented at a table with three other ladies, eating dinner.  After I said hello and sat down with them, it became clear to me that my mom had forgotten she was supposed to go to my house for dinner.

She asked me if I'd like to go upstair to her apartment for a few minutes.  "Of course," I said, and accompanied her upstairs.  We visited for a few minutes, as I found a basketball game on television for her to watch.  I didn't have the heart to tell her she had forgotten about he plans we had made earlier in the day.  She was relatively happy and content, so I told her good night and drove home.

I felt incredibly guilty because part of me felt relieved at not having to deal with getting her outside, into my truck and up to my house in Nashville, then back home.  I was relieved though, too, as she seemed happy, at least in that moment.  The land of conflicting emotions is where I spend most of my time as of late.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to my sister's house for the first time on Christmas day.  I spent 15 minutes or so trying to convince my mom that Tracy and Gary owned the house.  She was dead certain it belonged to someone else and, further, that she had never been there before.  This, of course, in spite of the fact she spent the night with them Christmas Eve.  There was nothing I could say to convince her otherwise.  The more we talked about it, the more frustrated she got with me.

A blue Christmas indeed.