It's hard to believe there are only three days left until Christmas. It seems like we hardly had time to digest our Thanksgiving food before the Christmas holiday season was upon us.
I admit that the house and tree decorating, the Christmas shopping, and the Christmas card mailing all happened much later in the month than it usually does for me. Typically, I like to have - at bare minimum - the house decorating done the weekend after Thanksgiving and then the tree up and decorated by the middle of the following week. That's 50 percent of the heavy lifting anyway.
But it wasn't meant to be due to a variety of reasons, among them the periods of anxiousness about life in general, what the future held, and concerns about mom. In short, it's been a struggle for me to truly get in the Christmas spirit this year.
It's not something you like to think about, but when you get older and your mom and dad, of course, get older, too, you start to wonder how many more holidays you'll get to spend together. No one lives forever, and if you haven't been able to do it any other time of the year, ideally, you want to make the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays count for something, to make them extra special for yourself and your family, especially when you're parents are getting up there in age, and even more so when they've been struggling with health issues.
SEE ALSO (VIP): Caregiver's Diary Part 57: Mom, Dad, and the Christmas Lights
All of the decorating around the house, including the exterior as well as the Christmas tree, finally got done 10 days before Christmas, with me getting a little bit done each day, so I didn't get overwhelmed. I know some people purposely wait until later in the month to do this, which is fine, but my typical routine is way different than how it played out this year.
The good news is that as the decorating slowly got done, we got all of our Christmas shopping done online as well, and the cards got mailed out, too. I even went ahead and shopped for my portion of the Christmas menu (the things I bring over to my sister's house), so I was glad to get that done before the grocery store rush got into full swing.
In the middle of everything, however, I was worried about Mom, because somehow she hurt her back early on in the month, and she didn't recover from whatever happened until a week and a half after the soreness started.
The day she told me she felt "much better," I said a thank you to God. I prayed so hard that her back would feel better, not just because I didn't want her to have to go through that, but also because traveling is always a challenge for us. That's especially true when we're visiting somebody else's house - even family, where even though they do the best they can, it's different from being at home, where everything is set up to suit mom's needs.
Headed into this past weekend, and with the knowledge in mind that mom was feeling like herself, she and I both decided it was time to go ahead and start wrapping gifts and to get all of that out of the way, so we could enjoy looking at them for a few days under the tree before the big day.
I've tried to come up with a system that works for both of us on this, but I have yet to come up with one that doesn't involve several hours of sitting in a chair, wrapping and bagging gifts. Even with breaks, it's still a challenge for her, and I could tell shortly before she took about an hour and a half break that she needed to stop and rest.
RELATED: Caregiver's Diary Part 61: The Story of Muffie, the Christmas Kitty
I kept going, though, and by the time she rejoined me, we were on the home stretch. I was trying to motivate her and tell her we were almost there, that we'd wake up feeling so much better knowing this was done. Plus, mom can't do as much around the house Christmas-wise as she used to, and gift-wrapping is one of the things she's told me she wanted to help with because it's something she can still do.
We finished about 45 minutes after she rejoined me, but it wasn't long after that when she mentioned that her back was bothering her again, this time in a different place, and that it was probably due to everything she'd done that day.
So she's having to contend with back issues all over again, three days before Christmas, to the extent she can't sleep in her bed right now, and I feel horrible for encouraging her to keep wrapping. But hindsight is 20/20, and had I thought for a second she was in pain, I would have had her stop for the day.
Meanwhile, I'd hoped that finishing everything yesterday would allow us a chance to catch our breath and relax for a little bit while enjoying looking at the decorations, the gifts, and the lights. But now I'm going to spend my time worrying about her (note: we have a message in to her doctor on this, where I've asked questions about medications) and feeling immense guilt, wishing I could hit rewind and do things differently.
These are the ups and downs of a caregiver. I feel bad for sounding like I'm complaining about it, because it's my mom going through the pain, not me. But sometimes we make decisions in retrospect that we wish we hadn't, and this is definitely one of those times. I'm praying God allows her to heal from this quickly, so she can have an enjoyable Christmas with us and so she won't have to worry about anything extra, like back pain.
RELATED: To check out my previous Caregiver's Diary entries, please click here. Thank you!
