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One Family Christmas

And A Lifetime of Memories

By Misty RaePublished 2 years ago 7 min read
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Winnie (Sept. 5, 1929 - Dec. 25, 2020)

With Thanksgiving (well, the American one) in the rearview mirror, I find my thoughts turning to Christmas. Who can blame me, it’s freakin’ everywhere, in the stores, on the radio, every freaking where.

As a kid, I loved Christmas. As an adult, I hated it. I wanted to love it, but I didn’t. It was too much work. Sure, I loved watching my kids open their presents. But after that came the endless chores all designed to make sure nobody was left out.

There’s nothing worse than having to get dressed, ripping your kids from under the tree, and putting them into the car to make the rounds. For us, the rounds meant driving over an hour each way to my mother’s house so she could see her grandchildren on THE day. She never came to us. Not once. We came to her.

She wouldn’t come to us. She couldn't come to us. She was agoraphobic. She hadn’t left the house since I’d been alive, except for a couple of brief visits to the hospital to visit my father and then, to his funeral. So, I plastered a dutiful smile on my face and for 25 years dragged my turkey-stuffed brood to her.

As my mother got older, she began to show signs of decline. Voices were menacing her. She was convinced people were out to get her. She was seeing things that weren’t there. Doctors weren’t sure if she had Dementia or a late-onset psychosis, but it was pretty clear by about 2015 that she wouldn’t be able to live on her own. So we moved her to a very nice special care facility.

Doctors eventually ruled out Dementia as a cause for her symptoms mostly due to the fact that she demonstrated no cognitive deficits. None. Not a one. Over the span of about 2 years, she maintained her sharp mind and acid tongue, often snapping at the nurses when asked what she deemed a stupid question. For example, when asked who the current Prime Minister was, she’d snort and proceed to list every Prime Minister in Canadian history, in order. The diagnosis, they reasoned, was, in fact, late-onset psychosis, a kind of Schizophrenia that happens in older adults.

It sounds strange to say, but the diagnosis and her new illness were in many ways a blessing in disguise. Her Agoraphobia disappeared. All of a sudden she was a social butterfly. She wanted to go everywhere and talk to everybody! And she did. Well, she did inasmuch as one can from a care home.

Given her newfound zest for socializing, we invited her to come to stay with us for a few days over the holidays. Well, to be honest, she invited herself before we had a chance to invite her. And there was only one condition, she had to play nice with my new husband, my former high school sweetheart who she never liked and liked even less once he reappeared in my life. In fact, she disliked him so much that upon learning we reconnected she grumbled, “got fat, can’t stand him.” She said it like it was one thought, but she had meant it like it was 2 separate thoughts, he got fat AND she can’t stand him. She denied saying it and maintained that denial for the rest of her life, smiling sweetly and saying, “I don’t remember, but if you say I said it…”

She agreed to be nice and on December 23, 2015, we picked her up and brought her home for 3 days. Her eyes were wide the entire trip as she examined the sights along the road. She chattered excitedly and endlessly about what she saw. She squealed with delight at the sight of our home, a modest, but spacious 3 bedroom.

Once settled, she plopped herself down at the dining room table and asked for a cup of tea. My husband made one for her and from that moment on, she forgot she didn’t like him. In fact, he was her new best pal. She spent most of her visit following him all over the house. You see, he redeemed himself by making what she called a mean cup of tea. And of course with the tea, there was plenty to eat!

You wouldn't have known it to look at her, but boy, could that woman eat! All of 5 feet, teeny tiny and 86 years old, she devoured everything that was put in front of her and still asked for more. She ate a very healthy helping of Christmas dinner, turkey, veggies, and all the trimmings and was the first to ask for dessert. When I asked her what she wanted, she looked over her choices carefully. I had made a pumpkin pie, butter tarts, shortbread cookies, and gingerbread people. One of each was her reply. Then she tore into the chocolates.

I wasn’t going to put up a tree. My kids were all adults so I saw no need. But she insisted, vehemently. Well, a tree she wanted, a tree she got. She helped decorate it, mostly by shouting orders and pointing. But other times, she just got up and elbowed her way in, to either place an ornament on or to remove one she thought was misplaced and put it someplace more to her liking.

She inhaled the pine scent and regaled us with stories of her youth and going out to the woods with her father to get a tree. She marvelled at our television and how we could put on almost any show she named from the past by using something she called “The YouTube”. We watched clips of The Jeffersons for hours.

Mostly, she enjoyed her grandchildren. That Christmas was the last time all 3 of my boys would be in the same house at the same time. My oldest son had graduated from university and was getting ready to move across the country to start his new life. And the other 2 were not far behind him. She watched them open their presents. Met their girlfriends. Opened the presents they got her and just talked and talked and smiled and smiled. She absolutely glowed in their presence! Whatever difficulties and complications she and I had had in our relationship as I grew up dissolved when she looked at them. The sun rose and set atop the heads of her grandsons and nobody would tell her different. And they loved her with similar unvarnished admiration.

The holiday ended with lots of hugs and kisses. She went home with her loot, including a painting of an angel my husband had completed just for her, to brighten her room and a seemingly endless supply of baked goods to enjoy.

We didn’t know it then, but that was the last and only Christmas that she’d have with all of us like that. The kids scattered themselves across various parts of the country. And while her mental state remained fairly stable, her physical health began to decline at an alarming rate soon after. She was never able to leave the care home after that.

But she never forgot the time she got to spend the holidays with us. She spoke of it often over the years, especially around that time of year. She’d brag to all the nurses and to her friends, often pointing to the painting that hung above her head, and then to the array of pictures on her bedside table. She’d tell them and anyone else who would listen all about her son-in-law, the Master Painter, and Tea-Maker Extraordinaire, her woman lawyer daughter, and the wonders that were her grandsons and her time with them.

My mother passed away on Christmas Day, 2020 in her 92nd year. In a way, now the holiday is bittersweet. It’s never easy to lose someone, especially at that time of year, but knowing she had, knowing we had and were able to give her that one family Christmas 5 years before she died gives me a sense of peace and joy and is my favourite holiday memory.

Originally published on Medium.com

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About the Creator

Misty Rae

Retired legal eagle, nature love, wife, mother of boys and cats, chef, and trying to learn to play the guitar. I play with paint and words. Living my "middle years" like a teenager and loving every second of it!

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