| Current mood: |  contemplative |
Christmas and Coffins
The holidays are generally never a time I really look forward to, but this year is different. This year my sister comes home from San Diego, which she rarely gets a chance to, with her new boyfriend, whom most of us have not yet met. On the Christmas' that she returns home, they are usually a little more reminiscent of the holiday season that I once loved as a child.
When I was a child, my sisters and I used to take turns putting the ornaments on the advent calendar. We would put on music as we decorated the Christmas tree, and on Christmas Eve, we would, as a family, open all of our gifts to each other, and then my dad would take my sisters and I out for a drive to see all the decorations and lights people had put up around their houses. This was my favorite Christmas tradition. It was magical.
I stopped believing in Santa Claus around the same time that my parents got divorced. Christmas was henceforth bifurcated. In the last 13 years since my parents' divorce, I have spent my Christmas holidays traveling back and forth from place to place. If I can't afford or find a gift for someone, Ellen gives me one to give to them, which has completely wiped out the sacredness of Christmas giving for me.
I have a hard time watching the world around me participate in the Holiday frenzy that antecedes Thanksgiving. Customers acting like a gaggle of turkeys, crazed and pecking around ferociously for bargains and items before the last one is gone. Hundreds and thousands of dollars spent on cards and gifts for friends and family, not to mention decorations and trees, and the novelty gifts and back-ups people buy for their co-workers or anyone who decides to give them a gift. It is not polite to receive a gift and not give one back. I don't know when this mindset began, but it hardly seems like any Christmas I'd like to participate in. Unfortunately, I don't have a choice, and am constantly nagged by my step-mother about what I've gotten for whom, etc. It is not acceptable in my family to be poor and decide not to give gifts. It is equally unacceptable to assure your family that you don't want anything, as in literally nothing. This is a concept that is as foreign as a quiet Italian meal.
My Nana recently took a trip to the hospital. My dad had gone to visit her when he found her completely out of it. She was rushed to the emergency room that night. After several tests, the doctors came up empty handed, but my dad and I both know that something occurred for her to be the way she is. You don't go from being alert and capable to suddenly lethargic and incontinent. She has slowly been developing what I believe is dementia for the past year now, but this recent event was unexpected.
When I was little, my Nana and Pop-Pop were always with us for the holidays to celebrate. They would drive from College Point, NY and stay with us for a few days. After my Pop-Pop died, my Nana moved to Connecticut and has been celebrating Christmas with us ever since. This is the first year that I've been scared that she might not make it to Christmas. The fact that I have already written her card and wrapped her present are besides the point, for it isn't about spending money that I could have saved, but I am genuinely worried and scared about what will happen when she passes. She may very well make it to Christmas and well past, but I know that her days are numbered. She is eighty-six years old and has been slowly displaying symptoms of dementia; she's lost weight, she seems unhappy.
Right before I sat down to write this, I opened a folder on the desk labeled Meadow Brook of Granby. It contained an application for a nursing home for my grandmother in Granby. On it were such formalities as her date of birth, birthplace, language, marital status, church, hospital and pharmacy preference, and last of all it asked about funeral home preference and whether arrangements have been made. Both were filled in. Yes arrangements have been made and a funeral account already exists. I cannot help feeling incredibly sad thinking about this. Do the people in admissions at Meadow Brook ever stop to think about the depth of what they are handling? For them it's paperwork. For each family member sending a loved one to the nursing home it is more. I wonder if my dad thought about his mother and her life as he filled in those boxes and made those arrangements. How strange that we dedicate part of our life to preparing our death. Here is a nice bed for you to rest in while your body slowly dies. Give us your money or your children's money so we can make you comfortable while you wait. Then, we visit funeral homes and look at coffins, buy plots in cemeteries. Some people even write their own soundtrack of the music they want played at their own funerals.
What is this obsession? This completely detached handling of our intimate death. Businesses see death as being a very lucrative inevitability. Buy the satin lined coffin with the gold handles! Spend thousands, literally, on containers to hold your empty, decaying shells! It reminds me in a way of the senselessness of the ceaseless spending done during the holidays.
Have we forgotten what Christmas is about? Have we forgotten what life really means? As the holiday season closes in, I have found myself treasuring my Nana, thinking about memories and hoping that she'll be able to be with her family for at least one more Christmas. That is what Christmas means to me. Love. Giving. Sharing. That is what life means to me.
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