"So this is Christmas..."

I was working on yet another article about my feelings; about how hard things are without my brother and how hard things are looking after my mother, about how it was to go through all of this with only me Mum to share it with, and her unable to hold on to the memory for more than a few hours. All of this should have made a horrible Christmas, and I was anticipating writing another pathos-laden article that would make everyone cry in undeserved sympathy.

Actually, it was a pretty good day.

There weren’t any gifts for me; this is hardly a new thing, and to be expected with my brother gone, and anyway getting gifts wasn’t really my thing. Giving, now, that is what I really enjoy, and I hate that money is so tight this year that I can barely afford Christmas dinner at Denny’s, not that I have all that many people to buy for any more. So Christmas wasn’t much about presents for me, not this year anyway.

Being an atheist, I’m not much of one for the whole Happy-Birthday-Jesus thing, and I’m not really into the whole Christmas movie thing, though I did watch "Jesus Christ Superstar" this year.

For me, Christmas has always been about family, and that hasn’t changed just because my family is down to my mother and me. (There’s Mark’s son, of course, but he spends Christmas with his mother since he’s only seven and we weren’t invited to her extended-family Christmas. Just as well; Mark and I used to sneak down to the basement and take a nap while her family was happily kareoke-ing away upstairs.)

Just Mom and me this year. I took her to Denny’s since I’m not anything like the cook that Mark was. And we had a good time, even if the portions were small, the prices were higher than the food warranted and the turkey would have tasted better with the feathers on. We joked and laughed and chatted, and shared a smile or two with the waitstaff, and Mom wasn’t all that much of a handful even though I had to try to keep here from eating her mashed potatoes with her butter knife. All in all, not a bad day at all.

We had a nice drive out and a nice drive home (though a long one; we live about forty-five minutes from the nearest Denny’s) and all the way back she kept saying what a nice time she had had, and she kept thanking me for giving her such a good day out.

The sad part was that within four hours of Christmas dinner, she had forgotten entirely about dinner, that she’d ever had dinner, much less that she’d gone out to a restaurant.

Well, I sort of expected that; I’d taken her to Old Country Buffet on Thanksgiving and she’d forgotten all about it by that night.

Mom’s memory has gotten horrible lately. A couple of months ago I wrote about what a wrenching experience it was when I’d had to tell her about Mark’s death all over again, and how I dreaded the inevitable day when I would have to do it yet again. I didn’t know then that that day would be the very next day, or that it would happen nearly every day since, usually several times a day and often several times an hour. That was extremely difficult, and it remains difficult, but though I’ll never get used to it I no longer find it such a shattering experience.

This, in itself, is quite shattering.

But never mind; Mom had a good day even if she can’t now remember it, and I had a good day that I won’t soon forget. Maybe it’s enough that one of us remembers.

The Blues Viking

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