Christmas is this week of course, and this time of year we all think back on some of our best Christmas Memories. We take if for granted we can, are lucky to do so.  Here's a short story, maybe you are going through something similar.

My mom turned 93 this year and for the most part has enjoyed good physical health for virtually all her life.  But my mom seemingly is outliving the good health, as her memory is failing and it's getting worse rapidly. Every day. Lucky, she is still in her 167 year-old farm house that she's owned, designed, updated and added on to many times since 1959. There is a qualified someone with her there 24 hours to take care of most everything now.  We are blessed for that.  It's the home she loves and the house we all grew up in.

My mom calls me many times per day these days, and recently has been asking about Christmas over and over.  She knows it's that season as she has her tree up (that she decorated wonderfully) , but I'm not so sure she knows it's this Friday, or even this week.  That is a difficult reality for all of us in our small family. But it is our reality.  I had to take her car away a year ago after 76 years of driving.  Reality really changed for all of us then, and it continues.

My mom was a 35-year college professor where she spent most of that time teaching young people how to speak well and proper in front of other people effectively and without fear. She also consulted high powered executives at big companies in Cleveland how to give a speech, and communicate more openly with other execs, and employees.

She was 91 when this was taken

She was an actor for about 25 years and starred in tons of plays and musicals in Northeast Ohio for most of my childhood and young adulthood. She was an artist and spent decades painting pictures and breathing new life back into old furniture, and selling a lot of it. She had talent in that regard none of knew she had until she was about 65.  She also taught singing lessons for many years as students came to the house, mostly in the summertime, and my mom used the piano to teach people how to hit the notes properly, and with power.

I have much of her furniture that she painted, this is terrific!

That is the most difficult thing for us to see here.  I feel badly for her, not for me.  I feel badly that for someone who spent their entire life teaching, performing and using their immensely creative brain every second of most every day, that it's come to this.  But it has. I think she deserves better after dedicating her life to others education.  But this is where we are.  If I had a Christmas wish, it would be that she could enjoy Christmas this year and have that memory to hold on to for the time she still has to go. Not so much of anything fancy or extravagant, just a memory of the day itself.

I think my siblings and I have digested that this could be her last Christmas, but you never know.  I'm a big boy, and I get what's going on, especially on days where I get 12 or 15 calls from her.  I don't feel badly about it, as it is as much of life as anything.  But I do feel badly for her, and her memory that is aged and is letting her down.

One of her many multi-media paintings

Here's to a Christmas wish, and hoping to make a Christmas Memory, not for me or my memory,  but for a woman who could use just one more memory to hold on to that's good  -  and accurate.  If you've been here, bless you, and I hope you are well in every way.

Merry Christmas!