Christmas Jeer

It's that time of year, again, isn't it?

I have some specific Christmas memories that I feel like sharing.

1978. My parents are separated, we're living in Stanton, the worst city in Orange County, if crime rates, property values or population density are any indication of quality. Mom, who is clinically depressed, alcholic and suicidal, is living in a cheap one-bedroom apartment some three or four miles from our house, but we never see her. I'm pretty much convinced I'm a space alien.

Despite having some pretty sympatico friends in SoCal [I moved from NorCal Jan. of 1976], I hate SoCal. The cheap pervasive commercialism, the oppressive sameness of the strip malls broken up only by actual malls, the porno ads on the abandoned gas station by my house [an UNTHINKABLE site in Modesto, where there was literally a white church with a picket fence on most corners], the thick, horny, pot-addled kids I had to go to school with, the weather - which seemed to be too stupid to know that it should get at least a little colder in the wintertime. I had some issues with the whole scene.

So Dad drives us to the most depressing mall in the area, Buena Park Mall, which was the last mall to get enclosed ... and this is about a week or so before Christmas. And he gives us about fifty or seventy-five bucks each and tells us to buy our own Christmas presents.

Which is better than getting nothing, I admit.

Fast forward some four years. Parents have reconciled. But things are getting worse. Mom is back on the sauce, and this time she has landed in the ICU for Christmas. She's about 5' 6" or so. But she has pneumonia and has dropped to under 85 pounds, probably in the high 70s. The docs at the hospital call us every day and give us the prognosis, a couple of times it has been "We don't expect her to make it through the night." So we go down, and camp out in the ICU, and see her. Usually she is unconscious. Sometimes she opens her eyes, but she can't talk, she's intubated. I'm 18 years old. I have a girlfriend, but the girlfriend is really not too much interested in supporting me emotionally, doesn't come to the hospital. Doesn't want to talk about it. So Christmas is pretty bleak emotionally that year for my family.

Sitting around ICUs so many times I've gotten to see some pretty harrowing things. People saying goodbye to children who are dying before their eyes, from accidents that happened that morning. You get a terrible future presented to you in an instant. These experiences have made me a lot more appreciative of the people around me, and hopefully a lot more forgiving. I understand grief.

So the words I would use to describe my Christmas feelings are "weird" and "ironic".