Like so many others I love the Holidays.  It has always been the time of year where I can look forward to seeing family and friends, making new memories and celebrating old traditions. However I don’t move as lightly into them as I once did.

Time has a funny way of shaping perspective and it is almost always not of our choosing. Oh sure I agree we can be grateful and thankful and joyous to our hearts content. I highly recommend that practice and certainly it is within my control to celebrate in that way, and I will and I do.  But I cannot control what is missing. What time has taken away, and nothing in the world can take its place.

My dad passed away over five years ago and although we talk about him with my mother almost every day, the memory of him is all I have left. Then of course there is the obvious disappearance of the mother I once knew. I am continually amazed at the new person she has become as a result of her dementia. We are all at the mercy of its indiscriminate erosion in her brain and so her behaviors change as does her personality.

I often miss my old mother the same as I do my dad.  It is as if she has passed away as well and all I have of her are the memories. But yet here she sits, living and breathing and behaving in a way so foreign to me it is all I can do not to get angry at times.

I would be lying if I say that anger is not sometimes directed at my mom.  I have to catch myself not to attach it to her, and often with the assistance of those around me, not to blame her for this new often unattractive behavior. My educated and conscious mind knows it is her disease and completely out of her control.  Her brain has vacant spaces that keep reason, understanding, manners and memory from flowing into their appropriate places.

But the little girl in me wants my old mother back. I want her to be smart and funny and tell a good story and correct my grammar when needed. I want her to give me a review on a book she just read, tell me the history of family silver as we set the holiday table and be happy to see the house full of people and love and noise. I want that mother back to share my Holidays.

Consequently, when I dissect my anger I know it is directed at the circumstances that time has shaped for me and the control that I no longer have in my life. I am angry at the disease that has robbed me of that woman whom I so admired, but also because the holiday memories that I am making with her today are some that the old mom would, to put it lightly, be embarrassed by.

So being grateful during this Holiday Season takes on new meaning for me. It starts with remembering that deep inside her (and sometimes right on top!) lives the mother who gave me life and endless love, even to this day. That a disease can change the landscape of how I view my mother but not the universe of love and family and friends that she created.

Most importantly, I will remember that one day these memories I am creating today, even though not moments my old mother would have enjoyed, will probably give me endless hours of stories filled with laughter and tears, heartbreak and understanding, compassion and joy for a life not planned but accepted.

If I can look forward to having those memories to weave into all the others, then for today I can be newly grateful for all that I have this Holiday Season, including still having my mother with me to love and to enjoy.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!