Christmas - Come and Gone

Wow was Christmas Day tough - for so many reasons. The emotions of the season spilled over on a day that has too many expectations piled onto it. I feel a version of this almost every year as I strive to make it unreasonably memorable for our kids. I try to balance the gift giving with a sense of what Christmas is really about but it is the time of year when I get a little carried away. (Or a lot when you think about what the third world countries have in comparison.) This year the

typical anxiety was tripled by trying to make it memorable for Mom and Dad as well. So it's no wonder that I came a bit unhinged yesterday.

Perhaps the unhinging was necessary because one result is that I realized I've been being played by Mom. When we sat in the neurologist office and she said that she really wants to live and get better, I started questioning her choices. Yesterday it hit me how much she has become dependent on me to do almost everything for her. When I filled out the paperwork for respite care I realized how much more I have to do for her now than when she first moved in. If she were losing the will to live and was shutting down in life, that would make sense. However, she doesn't want to let go yet and so her dependence on me is strangling me. And for awhile I allowed it but today I have a different perspective. A person who wants to get better, gets up and engages with life and does not spend all day lying in bed. I know she doesn't feel great but the less she does, the less she'll be able to do. I want her to live the days she has left with as much gusto as she can muster - for her sake, for Dad's sake and definitely for my sake.

With that in mind, I'm thinking that she might actually make it for another birthday, another Thanksgiving or another Christmas. Or she might not but I don't think it helps any of us to live this depressing, bedridden existence unless she really is ready to let go. And I don't think she is.