Other ghosts...

Christmas was difficult growing up. My mother was often quite depressed and she tried to use Christmas as a cure. It never worked. She would often burst into tears or display some hateful outburst against us if some food burned or if anything went wrong. If she got upset enough, that would piss off my father and it would all go downhill from there.

The last time I spent any time with her at Christmas was in 2004. I was a zombie that day so I don't remember anything about going to her house, I just know that we did. I was probably a zombie because of the previous Christmas of 2003 and the hell that followed.

My kids caught a really nasty stomach bug before the 2003 Christmas. It was really gross and my husband and I both caught it last and we got much sicker than the children did. We had to call my mother on Christmas Eve and tell her that we were very sick and could not come to dinner the next day. Instead of being concerned about us, she screamed at us and threw a fit because we were 'ruining Christmas'. She was very nasty about it. I remember how physically difficult it was to help the children get ready for bed that night when I was so ill. After they went to sleep, I was lying on the couch and my husband was stretched out on the floor. He was upset because we had not finished wrapping the children's gifts and it seemed like more than we could manage in the state we were in. I was too ill to get up anymore. I remember telling him he could put the gifts under the tree and cover them up with a blanket instead. After a while, he somehow got the energy to finish wrapping the gifts. It was a terrible and sloppy job, but it was the best that could be done and we were lucky it got done at all. The unpleasant phone calls from my mother's house and from her family of origin in the old hometown started coming in on Christmas morning. She had apparently reported my crime of illness to them and they started calling to heap on the guilt. My son was the only one who had any decency about the whole thing. He called and actually asked about how we were feeling and he dropped off some medicine for us on his way to my mother's house for dinner. It took me a few days to get well, but my husband felt a little bit better by the evening of Christmas day. He called my mother and asked her if he could bring some dinner from her house over to our house for him and the children. She screamed at him some more and told him no, he wasn't getting anything from her because WE HAD RUINED CHRISTMAS! I had not bought anything for us to make anything with because we had planned on being at my mother's house all day. No delivery places were open, either. My husband and children had soup for Christmas. I remember it was broth with macaroni and undercooked carrots in it. My husband made it. I tried to have some, but I could barely stomach any food yet. Later, two of my brothers were hanging around in our driveway late at night drinking in front of our house and throwing little pebbles at the windows. I thought I saw someone out there hiding behind my car, and sure enough it was them. They said they thought it would be fun to scare me. It was supposed to be a good thing to live just eleven doors down from my mother. It wasn't, and not for the first time. I helped her after my father died. I helped her with the death claim. I found that house for her, got her a new roof, and negotiated the sweetest deal ever. All for her. For my mother. I did a lot to try to help her adjust and I tried to make sure she knew that she was cared about and would not be left to fend for herself just because her husband had died. I felt sorry for her and I didn't want her to feel scared, alone, and abandoned. And I wanted her to love me, too. I was good to her and she turned on me viciously because I caught a stomach bug. She let my husband and my children eat really bad soup for Christmas when I was too sick to get up and take care of them. She was cruel to me and cruel to the people I love the most. And she did it when we were sick on a day that was supposed to be happy and special for my children. I felt attacked, abandoned, and hated by my mother because of that whole incident that Christmas. It was really terrible to be treated that way by my own mother. I can't even imagine screaming at one of my children for getting sick. I am worried and scared when my children are sick. I came very close to completely losing my mind in the following year. A lot of very bad things started happening to me psychologically, and even physically. 2004 was one of my worst mental health years EVER and I think that devastating Christmas had something to do with setting it all in motion.