My biggest problem with Christmas is dealing with the blues that come from too many bad memories. At the age of 73, I should remember a lot of Christmases . . . but I don't. If pressed into making a decision, I couldn't say which Christmas was my best, or worst. The bad ones stick out like sore thumbs, though, and I remember them distinctly. I spent one Christmas, my 21st, pretty much flat on my back recovering from an early November car accident that nearly killed me. 1999 was a bad one because we'd just buried my father-in-law, and other family problems added to that being perhaps the worst Christmas ever. My first marriage ended on Christmas. I lost several close friends within a few days of Christmas. There's no need to go on and on about the bad ones, but the point is that they've never completely stopped haunting me. And that usually ruins the best holiday of the year for me.
But . . . I'm married to a Christmas gal, a woman who despite all the bad Christmas seasons she's had, still throws herself into trying to make it a good time. I'm the problem, and I'm fully aware of that. It's hard for me to hide depression (wish I could), but this year I'm going to make myself toughen up and deal with Christmas. Yesterday, I tried to finish up shopping for presents, and that always makes me angry. I'm lousy at it. I've tried giving cash money enclosed in cheery cards, have spent upwards of five thousand dollars on a single Christmas, and none of that has worked. And, it's not them . . . it's me.
I got a badly needed lecture yesterday from my wife telling me to forget the money, forget about fretting over what I give people, forget about the past and all the bad memories . . . and just enjoy the time you have with people. Give something small and inexpensive, she said, but give it with a glad heart . . . and nobody will care much about the present itself. I went over to my shop after that, took care of some chores there, and then flopped down on a daybed and slept awhile. The dream I had was about as strange as they get, visitations from people I haven't seen in many years, some of them no longer around. But it wasn't a gloomy dream, wasn't like Scrooge's ghosts of Christmas past. They were all happy to see me, and although the dream was bizarre, it was a wake-up call for me. I woke up in tears, not so much from having seen people I've missed a lot, but from shame. Yeah, just like Scrooge.
I've got two days to turn things around, see if I can make something out of what could be my last Christmas. You never know at my age what tomorrow brings, and I don't want my family to remember my last Christmas as something that will spoil their future Christmases. And if I have a few more Christmas seasons to live through, they will be different. I'm not a poor man. I've got enough money to buy people nice things, but I've never given them the thing they want most . . . me in a good mood. It's gonna happen this year. I promise.
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