Bringing back Christmas

It isn't me. It's Mom. And she was Buddhist when anyone asked, so I don't know why she's nudging me. But I feel her nudging me. She seems to think it's time to get back in the spirit of it.

I haven't really thought about the last "real" Christmas in a long time. Not that I was avoiding it: it's almost as though it hadn't yet hit me. And then it hit me. In the Playing Mantis toy store in Nyack. I was overwhelmed with the feeling that she wanted to buy my kids the musical wooden marble run. So I bought it. And so the nudging began. And the memories.

The last "real" Christmas was in 1996.

It was surrounded by some of the most painful months I can remember, and sometimes I can't believe I really lived through them. Mom was so sick that fall. I had never seen anyone suffer the way I watched her suffer. It had been forever since she'd been able to eat or drink anything. At home, there were chest tubes and feeding tubes and catheters and morphine injections and bed pans and cheap pink plastic kidney-shaped containers for the vomit. The doctors said it was hopeless. It was only a matter of time. They'd said it from the beginning and I refused to believe it. So I prayed all the time. I made bargain after bargain with God and promise after promise. I read every alternative medicine book I could find and tried anything I could think of, but there was less of her every day.

I cried hysterically at the door as they took her out on the stretcher. The police officer who came to help chose that moment to tell me that he recognized me. He'd let me out of a speeding ticket, he said, and he waited for a response. He kept trying to talk to me and I wanted to hit him. I suppose he was the meaningless detail you cling to so you can stagger to the next place...

The next place was the ER, where she slipped into a coma. Septic shock they said. And they told us that was it. Her kidneys were failing. Her liver was failing. She'd never come out. And I looked at her and started to believe them. She had withered away. Her skin was loose and yellow and waxy. Her beautiful voice had faded away. She couldn't walk. And now she couldn't wake up. And I started to feel selfish for praying for her to get through this. So I sat beside her and said my thank yous, my apologies, my promises. My good-byes. Maybe. And more promises. And more thank yous. Because there's always more to say. There's always one last thing. Even now.

And, even though I hated facilitating those doctors and nurses who pressured and pushed us, I gently reminded Dad that she didn't want all those extra measures and asked him to sign the DNR. And I watched the tears roll quietly down his face. And I tried to wipe mine away before he could see. And then I prayed again because I couldn't help myself.

And then, one morning we walked into her room and she was propped up in her hospital bed. She said "I've been waiting for you... I like you guys." Just like that. And I can't really remember anything else, except that we eventually got to bring her home. And we promised her that we'd never bring her back there. We never did.

She was still very weak when we got her home, but she could get downstairs most days, so she would sit on the couch while we decorated the house. She would lay on the couch, wrapped up in a plaid, wool blanket. On one of those days, I went in to sit with her and her eyes were moist with tears. She told me this story:

Dad had been playing Christmas music while he decorated the tree. "Ave Maria" came on. It was one of the songs Mom had always sung so beautifully with the church choir. But she could no longer sing, so he knelt down beside her and started to sing to her. As he sang she began to cry, and as the tears rolled down her face, his singing cooled her tears. It felt so nice on her cheek that she wanted to tell me a poem about it, but the poem kept changing into Japanese and then she would forget the words.

I don't know exactly what that story means, even to me, but it changes my life to have heard it. All those priceless days were like that. Miracle sounds so trite, but that's what it was. I had said "good-bye". I had let her go. And she came back. And every conversation, every story that she told and each chance to hold her hand was a gift. A miracle. People always wish for that one last day... one more chance to say I love you... one more hour to talk. I was given 3 months with her - 3 months to really pay attention. And one Christmas.

So, I can't imagine how Christmas can ever measure up again. But here I am, feeling that nudge. And I guess if I just pay attention, maybe I'll get it... eventually.