Fa, la, la, la, la.....

Deck the Halls is one my LEAST favorite Christmas carols.  It always seemed rather pointless to me,  "Don we now our gay apparalll"  ok, whatever.   Of course, my Mom loved all things Christmas.  To a dyed-in-the-wool decorating freak like herself, Christmas was the Holy Grail, Nirvana and all those other rolled into one.  Imagine it, a holiday that literally expects you to move furniture and nic-nacs out of your house, pack them away, to put up other decorations and nic-nacs, so you can look at them for a just a month, then do it again.   Don't get me wrong, I'm right there with the rest of the lemmings doing it as early as everyone else.  I don't live in a very large house, so I don't have room to go Ikea crazy with the decorations.   But I do like a nice tree and a few other decorations.  This year I put up one of my Mom's last purchases in the decoration arena.  She had this several piece porcelain nativity that I took home with me.  It's very lovely, but would look lovelier in the middle of my 4000 square foot home.  So, I don't have one of those, I still put it up. 

I also put up a fiber-optic snowman outside, one that was still in the box, never used by her.  It made my dad happy that I have it up.  I am going up to his house Friday evening to decorate his tree and make his house festive.  It makes him happy to have things like my Mom might have had them, so I comply. 

Friends have been asking me how I'm doing this Christmas.  To be honest, I'm doing rather well.  Yes, I miss my Mom, yes I wish she was here, healthy and bugging me about helping her put up countless lights and tinsel on her tree.   I know my Dad wishes she was here, healthy or not, but I don't wish her here the way she was at the end.  My Mom is much happier where she is, despite the fact that I wish she was here.  

So here I am, my second Christmas without my mom.  So far, so good. 

Thanksgiving and other milestones

I think Thanksgiving is one of the most underrated and under appreciated holidays on our calendar.  Each year Christmas is moved up further and further in the retail and pop culture calendar till soon we will be seeing Christmas commericals during St. Patricks Day.    My Mom was always the Thanksgiving culinary artist in our family.  The two years before she passed and actually many years before that, my Dad was the one that really cooked the turkey with input from my mother.  So this year my dad had planned to buy a ham and cook that and take it to our family dinner.  However, my great aunt was disappointed that she would not get her turkey carcasse this year.  Each year my family gives my Aunt the turkey carcasse and she picks it clean and makes turkey and barley soup. 

So with much consideration and thought, my dad and I are going to make the turkey and dressing this year.  Its going to be a considerable effort, and something that I am sure my mother will find most amusing.  The dressing will not be hers, for sure, but I never liked oyster dressing anyway.  My dad is excited about it.  I think he wants to show that he can cook just as good as my mom and also anything that reminds him of the normalcy of our old life makes him happy.  

As the holiday's approach, I am actually very happy and excited to see them.  I think that the past two years were such a trial with my mom's sickness that this year is much lighter, despite her abscence.  There will be moments of sadness, I'm sure, but I hope that it is tinged more with happy remembrance.

As the year closes, I also am thinking of all the people that have touched my life through my mom's illness and wondering what they are thinking this time of year.     Those that I know from the Shydrager (MSA) list, I know have lost family members during the past year too as well as those that are still fighting this terrible disease.      A former employee lost his father this week, another former employee  lost his great aunt and great grandmother.   Each death reminds me of my mom, my grandmother, my grandfather and everyone else that has gone before me. 

Death is part of life.  I always thought that was corny, but it makes a lot of sense now.

Anniversaries

I signed on and realized that I hadn't posted since September!  I have been going through some personal health issues, that luckily, for now, seem to be minor. 

But the main reason I am here is that today is the 1 year anniversary of my mom's death.  At 10:50 pm, one year ago, my mom took her last breath and stepped into the arms of her Savior. 

Though this year was most certainly better for her than it was last year, the seperation has not been as easy for the family that remains.   It's been an interesting year.  My Dad seems to be plugging along ok and I have my moments but have done far better than I ever dreamed I would. 

I really don't know how the other family members have been dealing with things.  I don't see my aunt and uncles too often, nor extended family either.  Facebook has kept me up to date with my cousins, but that's about it.  I have a Great Aunt that is pushing 100 that is in my care now (more calls to see how she is doing etc)  She was very close to my Mother, so this year has been hard for her.  She has no children, so we were her surrogate children and grandchildren. 

But this year can't have been easy for my mom's siblings.  My mother was kind of the "glue" that held our family together.  She made sure our family at least got together a few times a year.  She remembered all he birthdays, holidays, everything.   I know that mantle has fallen to me, but I am definitely not that type of person.  I have a hard time remembering my own anniversary.  For instance today, the bank I work at sent me a flower for my bank anniversary. Totally forgot!

But this isn't about me.  This is just to say that last year a shining light in this world went out. 

I understand more something my grandmother told me when I was a child.  The older you get the easier it is to leave this world--because more people you know are in the next one that here!

Real Estate

One of the things that I knew I would have to deal with after my Mom died was my Dad's whims.  He tends to want to do everything at once then changes his mind in two hours about that too.   Lately he has been very lonely without my Mom where they lived together.  Don't get me wrong, he always misses my Mom, but lately, he's just been feeling the lonliness more than usual.  I dread the winter when he doesn't have the distractions of the yard to mow, something to fix, or the garden to work in.  So he has been on the kick of selling his place again.  It's true that someday he will have to move.  My dad is 75 years old, a very fit and spry 75, but 75 nonetheless.  So eventually the 5.5 acres of ground he has will need to be tended by a younger person.  So he's been looking at places to live in town and closer to my husband and I to live.  The problems is that my dad lives in a manufactured home.  To those of you that aren't familiar, manufactured homes are quite common in Indiana.  Unfortunately the powers that be at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as well as the PMI companies find them less than standard housing these days, thanks to the mortgage crisis.  So my dad will have a hard time getting his place sold, not because of its condition or where it is, which are all very good, but because of the lack of financing available for people buying it.

So its been an up and down process.  Right now, my dad is back to not wanting to sell, at least not now.  He is busy beautifying it, sorting items to get rid of etc.  I've told him that he shouldn't make big decisions like this the first year after mom was gone.  Well as the anniversary of her death looms closer, he still is deciding to stay or to move or to move or to stay.

Its enough to make a person scream!  Oh well, I will put up with it for now.  Who knows it might be all that wondering that keeps him young.   Of course its making me old!

Another Death

I belong to a support group mailing list on Yahoo for MSA.  I haven't been on there for ages, but decided to stick my nose in today.  One of the frequent contributors on there finally lost her husband to MSA.  It never ceases to amaze me how much something like that can totally change my outlook on the day.

I don't know these people at all, just through their posts.  Never talked to them on the phone, never met them in person.   But I feel just awful about the death of this gentleman.   One thing the internet has done for good is support for people with diseases that aren't "sexy" or the new "in" disorder.   Nobody knows what MSA is for the most part.  They say, "MS?" and you have to go into a lenghthy discussion of what it is.  For someone dealing day-to-day with the rigors of caring for someone with this disease, or worse yet the patient themselves, this is a pain in the butt.  (I cleaned that up, by the way.)

So when you hear about someone else that has lost someone to this disease, it hurts all over again.