The Last Time
The winter holidays encompass many things, not the least of which is Seasonal Affective Disorder, an affliction that some of you may think I have after reading this. I assure you I do not. In fact I think that realizing every holiday season could be your last and using said realization as motivation to enjoy every bit of the season is probably the healthiest thing one could do for oneself.
There I go jumping the gun again. Well, you might as well stop reading here since I’ve given away the whole point of today’s exercise. Yes you. Shoo. Go away. I’m going to talk to myself now.
They gone?
Good.
Christmas 1999. My parents were old, but not so old that they should have both been wheelchair bound. My mother had a bilateral hip replacement. My father had one leg. Still, they should have been able to get around better but it was easier to be sedentary and truth be told they were probably both very tired of living. I don’t blame them, my dad was 71 and my mom 69 and there are days where I’m tired of it all at only 42. It was Christmastime though, and the annual ritual was always to have Christmas Eve at my parents’ house and then the family scattered on Christmas Day. Typically my parents would visit my middle sister’s on Christmas Day morning for breakfast and we would join them and then my folks would go home and the Mrs. and I would go to my in-laws. The Christmas Eve ritual had been a constant in my life, a seasonal anchor, a happy occasion that was often shared with my friends or other family members’ friends who had nothing else to do on Christmas Eve for whatever reason. I was 32 at Christmas 1999, and while specific details of the Eve and Day celebrations elude me I can tell you that from my early twenties to that year I would typically get some good seasonal beer, often abbey ales in large bottles with Champagne corks and that would be my contribution to the Christmas Eve feast. I would even get my parents to try the ales; my mom in particular liked a bit of Belgian Dubbel-style ale or at least pretended to in order to indulge me. So Christmas Eve came and went with the eating and drinking and the orgy of gift giving and the yelling and the drama and the laughter and everything that large family gatherings entail short of a fistfight or murder. Christmas Day morning passed with bagels and microwaved bacon and eggs for those who like unfertilized chicken embryos and the afternoon passed at my in-laws.
Then I had to go back to my parents’ house. My mom wanted the Christmas tree taken down so her favorite sitting chair could go back in the corner where the tree resided through the holiday season. Christmas Day night, this was. She insisted. Part of it probably had to do with the fact that I had a trip to Ottawa planned the following week to ring in the millennium on the front lawn of the Canadian Parliament; a symbolic gesture of my hope to retire to some beautiful part of that country at some point in the new century. The other part I suspect was that her world had shrunk to the space circumscribed by the walls of her house and she needed to exert a huge amount of control there to still feel somehow vital. To her, the holiday was over, get on with the business of living, or existing, or whatever she was doing at that point, likely completely ignorant of the fact that her conscious existence would cease twenty-one days later although her body would hang around for a bit over five months after the brain mostly shut down.
Dutifully, I went to their house and took down the tree, not too gently I suppose though it didn’t matter in the long run since that tree never went up again. I probably exchanged some annoyed words with my parents for making me do that on Christmas Day night but there’s no point in trying to unearth the memory of what exactly was said. The deed was done and that’s how the last Christmas that my mother spent on Earth ended.
My father lasted one more Christmas. There’s a picture of some of our family surrounding him from Christmas 2000 that I can hardly stand to look at. He was terminally ill himself at that point and locked in a horrifying depression that no combination of Helpers From Your Friendly Pharmacist could unfasten. His face in the picture is one of pure and utter misery while the rest of us are smiling like idiots. He lasted thirteen days after Christmas before ceasing to be just three hundred and fifty eight days after my mother had been silenced.
So it is now the Christmas season of 2009. The traditions have varied and evolved a bit in the ensuing decade since the last Christmas Eve at the house where I grew up, or at least lived from the ages of zero to twenty-three. That house is gone. The front walk where I stood asking if each passing set of blinking airplane lights was Santa’s sleigh is gone. In fact most of the yard is gone since there are a couple of duplexes on our hold property. The holidays have become more scattered. A couple of my siblings are grandparents now so their attention is focused on their grandchildren. Some other family members can’t be bothered with the traffic and aggravation of holiday travel and frankly I don’t blame them, I hate it too and without the focal point that my parents represented there is little motivation to deal with it. It is the natural order of families to have the center of the holiday season progress on a generational basis from grandparents to parents who once again become grandparents. Don’t think I’m being maudlin or bitter here, I am not. I’m simply noting the transitions that I have observed which, all things considered, seem to be perfectly normal and natural.
It is because of those transitions that I now try to breathe in every ounce of the holiday air, to feel its spirit and pulse and to enjoy the company of those who choose to spend it with me. I take pleasure in every ritual, wondering as I go through each if it’s the last time I will engage in it. I know some folks who were alive last Christmas who are probably quite surprised to find themselves deceased this Christmas and I know I could just as well be one of those people, maybe even before Christmas 2009 has come and gone. So every time I get a bit stressed or aggravated over the holidays I take a minute and I remember each person on the ever-growing list of people that I know who can’t celebrate the season because they’re gone. It really works. Happy Holidays.
There I go jumping the gun again. Well, you might as well stop reading here since I’ve given away the whole point of today’s exercise. Yes you. Shoo. Go away. I’m going to talk to myself now.
They gone?
Good.
Christmas 1999. My parents were old, but not so old that they should have both been wheelchair bound. My mother had a bilateral hip replacement. My father had one leg. Still, they should have been able to get around better but it was easier to be sedentary and truth be told they were probably both very tired of living. I don’t blame them, my dad was 71 and my mom 69 and there are days where I’m tired of it all at only 42. It was Christmastime though, and the annual ritual was always to have Christmas Eve at my parents’ house and then the family scattered on Christmas Day. Typically my parents would visit my middle sister’s on Christmas Day morning for breakfast and we would join them and then my folks would go home and the Mrs. and I would go to my in-laws. The Christmas Eve ritual had been a constant in my life, a seasonal anchor, a happy occasion that was often shared with my friends or other family members’ friends who had nothing else to do on Christmas Eve for whatever reason. I was 32 at Christmas 1999, and while specific details of the Eve and Day celebrations elude me I can tell you that from my early twenties to that year I would typically get some good seasonal beer, often abbey ales in large bottles with Champagne corks and that would be my contribution to the Christmas Eve feast. I would even get my parents to try the ales; my mom in particular liked a bit of Belgian Dubbel-style ale or at least pretended to in order to indulge me. So Christmas Eve came and went with the eating and drinking and the orgy of gift giving and the yelling and the drama and the laughter and everything that large family gatherings entail short of a fistfight or murder. Christmas Day morning passed with bagels and microwaved bacon and eggs for those who like unfertilized chicken embryos and the afternoon passed at my in-laws.
Then I had to go back to my parents’ house. My mom wanted the Christmas tree taken down so her favorite sitting chair could go back in the corner where the tree resided through the holiday season. Christmas Day night, this was. She insisted. Part of it probably had to do with the fact that I had a trip to Ottawa planned the following week to ring in the millennium on the front lawn of the Canadian Parliament; a symbolic gesture of my hope to retire to some beautiful part of that country at some point in the new century. The other part I suspect was that her world had shrunk to the space circumscribed by the walls of her house and she needed to exert a huge amount of control there to still feel somehow vital. To her, the holiday was over, get on with the business of living, or existing, or whatever she was doing at that point, likely completely ignorant of the fact that her conscious existence would cease twenty-one days later although her body would hang around for a bit over five months after the brain mostly shut down.
Dutifully, I went to their house and took down the tree, not too gently I suppose though it didn’t matter in the long run since that tree never went up again. I probably exchanged some annoyed words with my parents for making me do that on Christmas Day night but there’s no point in trying to unearth the memory of what exactly was said. The deed was done and that’s how the last Christmas that my mother spent on Earth ended.
My father lasted one more Christmas. There’s a picture of some of our family surrounding him from Christmas 2000 that I can hardly stand to look at. He was terminally ill himself at that point and locked in a horrifying depression that no combination of Helpers From Your Friendly Pharmacist could unfasten. His face in the picture is one of pure and utter misery while the rest of us are smiling like idiots. He lasted thirteen days after Christmas before ceasing to be just three hundred and fifty eight days after my mother had been silenced.
So it is now the Christmas season of 2009. The traditions have varied and evolved a bit in the ensuing decade since the last Christmas Eve at the house where I grew up, or at least lived from the ages of zero to twenty-three. That house is gone. The front walk where I stood asking if each passing set of blinking airplane lights was Santa’s sleigh is gone. In fact most of the yard is gone since there are a couple of duplexes on our hold property. The holidays have become more scattered. A couple of my siblings are grandparents now so their attention is focused on their grandchildren. Some other family members can’t be bothered with the traffic and aggravation of holiday travel and frankly I don’t blame them, I hate it too and without the focal point that my parents represented there is little motivation to deal with it. It is the natural order of families to have the center of the holiday season progress on a generational basis from grandparents to parents who once again become grandparents. Don’t think I’m being maudlin or bitter here, I am not. I’m simply noting the transitions that I have observed which, all things considered, seem to be perfectly normal and natural.
It is because of those transitions that I now try to breathe in every ounce of the holiday air, to feel its spirit and pulse and to enjoy the company of those who choose to spend it with me. I take pleasure in every ritual, wondering as I go through each if it’s the last time I will engage in it. I know some folks who were alive last Christmas who are probably quite surprised to find themselves deceased this Christmas and I know I could just as well be one of those people, maybe even before Christmas 2009 has come and gone. So every time I get a bit stressed or aggravated over the holidays I take a minute and I remember each person on the ever-growing list of people that I know who can’t celebrate the season because they’re gone. It really works. Happy Holidays.
Comments