Dad, Family, mission impostible

The last Christmas

We spent Christmas Eve at my parents’ house.  Both my sisters, their spouses, and all children.  100% attendance by the DePlume family.

It’s the first holiday in memory my mother has commanded our presence rather than request it.  “This will probably be the last Christmas,” she added, trailing off.  Last Christmas before what? I did not ask.  At least not to her face.

But my Internal Narrator asked me, over and over.  Fucking annoying. During a dark, half-asleep trip to the potty; while cutting carrots for dinner; every step of my afternoon walk.   Before WHAT?

I was pretty tense on the drive up there.  My mom never calls me anymore.  When I call her, she has high pressured speech – talking hard and fast about whatever it is that’s on her mind, usually something that’s made her sad or angry.   Eventually, she’ll say, “How are you doing?” or worse, “You keep me so distant  – you never tell me what’s going on in your life anymore.”

My heart never fails to lurch at those words.  I’ll start to talk, but within a sentence and a half, she’ll interrupt: “I hate to do this, but I’ve been talking too long and nature calls,” she said the first time before hanging up.  “Oops, here comes your Dad, I have to help him,” she said the second.  And I’m not even joking, the third time, she fell asleep and started snoring.

I know she can’t take on one single thing more.  She can’t take care of me, not even at the level of hearing about my day.  I know the energy needs to flow to her – our relationship is not a give and take anymore.

Knowing didn’t prepare me for seeing her.  She is haggard, dead-eyed, with few facial expressions.  She makes minimal eye contact.  Her skin is terrible.

All this time I have been worrying about losing my father, but I understand now I will lose them both.  She is dying as quickly as he is.

What was only a theoretical choice a few months ago is visceral now.  My dad was always going to die.  That was in the cards.   She could’ve stayed with us, but she chose to go with him.  All this time, I’ve been hoping she could pull this choice off, be some WonderWoman who cared for my dad until the end, then came back to us.

Now I understand the last true words my mother spoke to me were, “You are already an orphan.”  Looking back, she must’ve known we had to cut the tie between us, maybe so it wouldn’t drag me into the darkness with her.

She has taken to sleeping alone in her guest bedroom now.  My dad hardly sleeps at night, and she needs the downtime.

When we arrived at her house, she asked me to put fresh sheets on the bed so my husband and I could use it.  The request unsettled me only because my mother is from the South.  Being unprepared for guests is against their religion – I’d never made my own guest bed in her house my whole life.

I hauled a bundle of sheets to the back bedroom and got busy.  When I found her uncovered pillows, I was surprised to see they were nasty, yellowed, stained things, the feathered ones half-empty and clotted.  Ugh, Mom is really slipping, I thought.  It crossed my mind to wonder why all of them were so god-awful, but mostly I was irritated — my husband is finicky and I didn’t know if he would tolerate this level of grossness.  Even I was hesitant about sleeping on them, and I’m none too finicky.

Despite my repulsion, when it came to putting pillow cases on, I fell back into old habits and bit the end of the pillow between my teeth to help shake it into its case.  Ew, I know.  But 1) I don’t know how to put a pillow case on any other way, and 2) she’s my mom, what worse cooties could she have than the ones I got living inside her, right?

The pillows were salty.  Yeah, I probably got what I had coming to me for putting one in my mouth, but I seriously stood there wondering WTFuckingF was SALTY?  After a moment of barfy confusion, I put the rest of the bed together and left.

After I’d been at her house two days, I knew.  Those pillows are lumpy, destroyed messes because they have been soaked in tears.

21 thoughts on The last Christmas

  1. I’m in this weird place where I’m crying because this is so sad and I hate this for you and yet I cannot figure out how one uses their teeth for pillow case application. My kitten is patting at my face while I lie here in bed crying, she’s mystified and I’m so sorry and yet the teeth. I’m sorry, Anne.

  2. I am so sorry. I just wish I could climb through this screen and pat your hair and make you tea or something. This is heartbreaking.

  3. Holy crap. Obviously I am not the only one to weep at reading this. I am also with Kacey… I have some lovely vanilla spice hazelnut tea that takes the edge off of most things. Gonna go make some in your honor and wish I could offer you a cuppa IRL.

  4. What sudden, profound, heartbreaking revelations to make in a time that should be full of joy and celebration. My heart breaks for you, and my thoughts are with you and your family. God, life sucks sometimes.

  5. Oh dear, I’m so sorry. So hard. The situation, the distance, the fact that you feel so helpless in the face of this tide of events… what a hard Christmas.

  6. I am so sorry. You write with such beauty about such unspeakably hard things. I’m thinking about you, so much, with a lot of hope.

  7. Oh God. Anne. My dear. I came back to your blog tonight for me, because I tonight learned that my father has just been given a year, more or less, and I needed you, your telling of your story, because no one else gets it. Fuck me, but it really hurts sometimes.

  8. I’m sobbing now. Because your words and experiences happened to me. My dad had the Parkinson’s and dementia. My mom was going to do it all. She didn’t need any help. No one else was going to take care of her husband. We begged and pleaded her to get him into a nursing home. As much as we hated the idea. It was killing her. She was so terribly depressed. She couldn’t lift him. She couldn’t keep an eye on him 24/7. She wouldn’t get the lump on her neck looked at, insisting it was a blocked duct. She finally allowed someone to come to the house to help bathe him and give her a few hours away. It made a world of difference. She finally broke down and realized she couldn’t do alone anymore. She should have done it years before. After six months of her putting him in a home, she was diagnosed with throat/tongue cancer. The chemo and radiation almost killed her. She was gone in her head. My dad’s memory and now her’s was gone, too. She came out of her medication fog long enough to be there when he died. She was never the same again. She died three years ago. Five years after him. If she would have taken care of herself and let others help him, I would have had her longer. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. It sucks and is terrible. Please talk to your sisters and family and ask them to help convince your mom to get help. You won’t regret it. You won’t. I’m sorry.

  9. JoAnna, your story is so similar to mine. My mom has Alzheimer’s, and after my dad admitted he couldn’t take care of her anymore, he finally had a doctor look at the lump in his neck. The cancer was so far gone they couldn’t even tell where it originated. He died three months after he put her in a nursing home. Six years later, she remains there, recognizing no one and unrecognizable. I’m so sorry, for you and me and Anne and all of us with stubborn loving ailing parents. It is so hard.

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