christmases past...

i really can't remember the last time my whole family was together on christmas. the first year i was in the military i flew home for christmas, but i can't remember if both my sisters were there or not. i couldn't make it home the next couple of years because one year my sister had just gone through some serious chemo treatments and they thought she was too weak for us other kids to come home. she had no immune system and they were worried we'd bring home bugs. the other years i had various military obligations that prevented me from making it home. two christmases ago we were finally going to do it. it was going to be a huge family thing, my mom was incredibly excited to have her whole flock together again.

so two years ago my dad went to see his doctor. he'd had a quintuple bypass a couple years before and he wasn't feeling 100% right again or he had some questions or something. so he talked to the jackass and the guy basically put it in his mind that he was dying. now every one of us starts dying the instant we're born, the question is "when". and this guy made it sound like it was fast approaching for my dad. he and mom had a trip to thailand planned over thanksgiving for months and had bought the tickets and everything so they went ahead and went.

while they were there, he couldn't stop obsessing over the news from the doctor so he came home early and made an appointment to go to the mayo clinic. when he got home he got the word from my sister that she had gone to the doctor about a persistant headache and the word came back that it was a tumor. they thought that she should go to NYC and see a specialist sooner rather than later. dad called mom and got her moving back home quickly. they went in through her nose and cut the tumor out of my sister's head. there was alot of concern because she was a photographer and the tumor was near her optic nerve. they thought she might lose eyesight and possibly sense of smell and taste. they got most of the tumor out and sent her home with instructions to come back for a checkup. when she went to the hospital in s.c. for the follow-up they found out that the tumor had come back and was now growing at a pretty incredible rate. they sent her back up to NYC for an immediate operation. by this time my mom was back and she rushed up to NYC to be with her, and my little sister went out there to help take some of the strain off my mom and to arrange alot of the little details.

a couple days before christmas they cut the top off of her head and dug around in there and got what they could out of there. the night before christmas things started to go bad. fluid was building on the brain and causing pressure and the drain they'd put in her skull wasn't working quite right so they were going to have to back in. my dad couldn't go to new york because the monday after christmas he was supposed to go to mayo for an angioplasty to check his heart out. he thought he was dying and was hoping they'd find something out to give him a couple more weeks or months or years so he could be there for my sister and the rest of the family. but it was killing him not to be there. christmas eve mom called me and asked if there was anyway i could make it to phoenix to sit with dad and to take him to his appointment. it was too late to get a flight home and it's only a 12-14 hr ride so i decided to get a good night's sleep and start driving the next day. i took off and had a fairly catastrophic break-down at the new mexico/colo border. i had no idea what to do and needed to get home, so i left the car and started hiking down the street to a state weigh station. i was hoping to get a ride to the next town to try and rent a car or something. while i was in the weigh station i called my dad and asked him if he could start calling around to try and find me a rental car in albuquerque. the very first trucker into the weigh station after i got there was going to phoenix. i'd never hitched a ride before in my life but figured that must be a sign. two weeks before i'd been in a military school in seattle and had met up with a friend. i'd left my cell phone in their car and was literally lost without it. i didn't have a chance to call my dad to tell him i had a ride to phoenix before the trucker pulled out. so for about the next ten hours he had no idea where i was or what was going on with me.

i finally got into phoenix and had my dad come pick me up. stepping into that house was one of the saddest damned moments in my life. mom had decorated the whole thing. it had never been like that before. stockings everywhere, the works. dad didn't have the heart to tear it all apart by himself so we started to take some of that down after i got there. he's since said that without a doubt that was one of the worst moments of his life. he thought he was dying, he had no idea where i was, he thought his oldest daughter might not make it through the day...

dad went through the procedure at mayo and they told him a totally different story than his normal doctor did. yes, he was having problems and there was some blockage but it wasn't unfixable. it could be treated with medication and if it got worse it was possible that they could use stints. he wasn't going to die that day, and his heart wasn't going to fail on him anytime soon. two days later, against medical advice he flew out to new york to be with them. there was a slight possibility that the change in pressure from flying might've affected the plug they put in his leg from the angioplasty apparently. my sister pulled through that patch and made it until october. there were some rough weeks at the end, but she had a great spring and summer. so last year was their first christmas without her and i was in iraq. i'd made it home on emergency leave when we lost her in october so i couldn't come home to be with them that christmas, so on top of the pain of losing her, they were worried about me. to be honest, i had it easiest of the whole bunch. my sister and i had parted ways years before so the loss didn't hit me as sharply and i was able to throw myself into work. we had alot of kids over there who weren't getting mail so i was rushing around trying to arrange gift packages for them on top of my normal duties and was just really able to drown out alot of those feelings.

in the buddhist religion there are some things that have to be done on the year anniversary of someone's death. my parents have taken some of my sister's ashes back to thailand this year so that my grandmother can honor some of those things. it's hard, but in talking to my little sister who went with them, apparently this season hasn't been all doom and gloom.

past christmases have kind of sucked lately. mom still doesn't know about me hitch hiking and probably never will. i'm the only person that dad talks about the sadness of that christmas with. i'm sure that mom and my little sister were having a similar experience in nyc. she never got her hope of having all of us kids under one roof again for another christmas. but it sounds like they're healing and hopefully christmases will start looking up, beginning with this one.

i hope everyone is safe and happy, or at least content and at peace. i hope everyone can look back on the last year and find something to be thankful for.

merry christmas ya'll.