Memories of Dads Last Christmas on Earth

Well eversince I learned THE TRUE story of the history or ORIGINS of Christmas and of the history of ALL RELIGIONS, I stopped celebrating individual holidays altogether and have determined in my new SECTARIANISM, to Celebrate Everyday AS IF it were our last....for it just very well MAY BE our last.

There was one exception and that was Christmas 07, when I spent the day at my parents house alone with them as mother and I helped father to Celebrate his last Christmas with us on earth. It was the most pitiful time of my life, sitting there in his tiny trailer-park bedroom, on the edge of his "hospice at home" deathbed where he lay for nearly 11 mo waiting to die from his heart disease (it was malnutrition that eventually got him) . It was only just the three of us, me, my mother and dying drugged up disoriented dad who (we) had chained to his hospital bed in hopes that he would die there peacefully in his sleep and not have a "traumatic event." This was my sisters idea, and she was the chief caregiver as she actually is/was a supervising geriatic nurse in a local nursing home. Perhaps that is why she was planning this course of immobility for my dad, as she works with death and dying everyday. Guess she knows the best way for a person to go is in their sleep and that is what she wanted for poor old dad. He just didnt go as quick as everyone thought. It is a different "ball-game" alltogether with heart patients on hospice. They are supposed to have a higher standard of care and the idea is to MAINTAIN functionality. Alas, due to sis's over-protectiveness of my father, whom I have NO DOUBT that she dearly loved and was trying to do her best for him, my father never got that higher standard of care but was instead treated as if an "end-day" cancer patient with "comfort care" given only. Despite having SEVEN brothers and sister in the neighborhood, I guess they all had other, more important things they had to be doing, other than spending my fathers last Christmas with him. The three of us celebrated alone together that day, but it wasent a joyous occasion. I sat on the edge of my fathers bed as he lay, propped up enough to be able to look out of the bedroom window at the snow that was gently falling. The three of us actually broke into song, as mother and I tried to FORCE SOME GAIETY into the room.

This is the ghost of my Christmas Past that shall haunt me for the rest of my days, but hey, at least I was there for him on his last day of Christmas on earth. RIP dad. You too mom. I hope the after-life was all that you had imagined it was, and that you (and dad) are now safe in your gods loving arms.