Tea With Me: December 18th, 2018 Tuesday

18th December, 2018 Tuesday

I do, I feel pretty haunted right now.  Things about my past, the pivotal moments, the stumbling acrosses, all seemed to have some centrifugal source at this point in the cycle of the year. 

Dickens picked up on all this.  Not that I feel Scroogeish but I do feel that all the shades of Christmas Pasts, this Present and Yet To Comes have descended. 

My Mama’s Mantra for years was, “I hate Christmas.”  She really pissed all over it.  For the twelve years I lived in close proximity to her with two children walking through divorce holidays, I struggled with how to heal Christmas for her, somehow I could always find the Light at this moment.  Every cycle after 2001 just got darker for her.  Except for her last.

Her oldest daughter, my oldest sister, died of complications due to a burst appendix 16 December, 2001.  This sister was titled schizophrenic after a year of dropping acid and then being locked up in a closet for three days by some truly evil jealous girls because they just didn’t want to deal with her bad trip.  Of course she was catatonic by the time her boyfriend came back from his three day shift as an anesthesiological resident and opened that closet door, a Pandora moment for my sister.  He couldn’t deal either so he sent her home to my totally baffled parents. 

And so began a 30 odd year cycle of institutionalization, getting out, stop medicating and then back to the institute.  A very familiar cycle for those who are gifted the Title Schizophrenic.  The field of psychiatry was still pretty medieval.  Initially, a “Family Therapy” session gave license to some twerp shrink to gather all of us in a room bewildered about what was happening and pose the question, “So what is each of your contribution to setting up Lelia for her emotional distress?”  I was 11, early hormonal, and very sensitive to energy anyway so I sprouted such a waterfall of tears that I was excused to go wander in the parking lot of what was then a straight up Loony Bin. 

Just one vignette of the many experiences we had.  There seemed to be a hiatus early on that seemed like she might not ever have to be in that bizarre state again.  She married the anesthesiologist and lived a seemingly glamorous life on the West Coast in the 70’s.  More drugs and cult contact set her up again. 

Oh, I cannot write that map today. 

You get the drift.  30 years of these ups and downs and divorce and needing to be hospitalized near home.  A country club type hospital not too far from the family home back East eventually became her home.  She was beloved and influenced patients and staff incredibly.  They all showed up for her memorial.  I gave my spot in the family lineup of speakers to her favorite nurse who Eulogised the Woman my sister had been to all those strangers so beautifully.  Most of my family felt she had died for them after she got “sick”. 

I was her sister. Not her mother.  My poor Mama had no clue how to process all the stuff about her first born shining promise of a Girl who lit the World where ever she went even after she couldn’t track in the Norm. 

My Mama drank and cried.  No therapist for her.  Oh no, we don’t do that. 

Of course Christmas was haunted for her even before my sister veered.  After it was deadly.  She would paint the ornament inventory for the Charity she volunteered for and sell all her little creations at the Christmas bizarre.  She would do the Christmas Eve dinner and then Christmas Day dinner and then collapse for the week in between Christmas and New Years while my Papa took my brother on their annual ski trip. 

Well, the long and short is that after 2001, she really couldn’t find Christmas again, her idea of Christmas.

It couldn’t be the yearly unfolding of the brilliantly successful family she had worked so hard to launch in her youth.  She had no clue how to reconcile the reality of the lives we all wobbled our way through.  She latched on to the Grandchildren when they were small as the Light bringers for a bit but not for long.  They grew up.  She had such a hard time with children not being little and biddable anymore. 

“I hate Christmas. Bah Humbug.”  Eventually, my sister and her husband whose Ranch she spent the last 6 years of her life on, wouldn’t put up with it and she made the effort. 

I spent her last Christmas with her.  My sister had informed me she had laid the Humbug hatchet down, she had actually announced this.  I think she knew it was her last.  I could not would not connect with her, oh no.  I had shut down the avenue we shared for so many years.  I couldn’t do it anymore.  So much in our River together.  I sat in a chair, Madame Defarge knitting all the crimes into a sweater, while we watched television and ate a bit.  A week. 

My brother brought his children for Boxing Day and we feasted.  I captured a moment between my Mama and My Brother’s Eldest, a fine Pixie Woman who had a necessary walkabout as a teen. 

I am spent again. 

Today I am stringing twine across my windows.  Then I will hang some of My Mama’s wooden ornaments she so painstakingly painted years ago for those Christmas Charitable Bizarres. 

My Christmases have gotten richer.  The steeping of the memories, dark and light, have brewed a lovely Spirit Grog this year.  I have always loved Christmas but I have always been drawn to the minor keys. 

Merry Christmas, Mommy.  I miss you.