The Good And The Bad

Christmas is always such a powerful time of year.  At least for me.  While I love Christmas, it makes me feel like I'm practically bi-polar!  One minute I'm happily enjoying the joys of the season, spending time with family, reliving some of my favorite Christmas memories.  The next, I'm missing my grandparents, getting road rage because of the idiots driving around me, and feeling sad about all the friends I've lost touch with over the years.

This year was no exception. 

I had a great time with my family - we went to Christmas Eve service at church (the first time I've gone in several years), we opened lots of fun presents, and we enjoyed our favorite Christmas Eve tradition of eating Chinese food and watching an inappropriate movie (this year it was The Hangover 2).

Now that we're more than a year out from my dad's diagnosis, I tried like hell to take little mental pictures throughout our Christmas weekend, knowing that next year could be completely different.  Sitting with JB in church, talking to him at dinner, watching him open his stocking presents on Christmas Day and seeing his face light up when he got a movie that he's been talking about for months.  Click, click, clickity click - pictures, pictures, and more pictures (though, ironically, we didn't take any actual pictures)!

However, while we enjoyed our time as a family, I found myself fighting back tears on several occasions. 

Tears about the fact that we continue to see a decline in my dad, tears about the fact that the next year is a great big unknown, and tears about what will never be. 

As we sat around on Christmas Day, I thought about how great it would be to have a little one with us (no, I'm not pregnant).  How fun it would be to walk into my parents' house with our little family and call out "Merry Christmas", to gather around the Christmas tree to open presents, and to get to see Christmas through our child's eyes. 

And then it hit me...if and when that actually happens, my dad won't be there.  He won't get to see his grandkids all dressed up to go to church on Christmas Eve.  He won't help them set out cookies and milk for Santa.  He won't be there to see them tear into presents on Christmas Day.  And that breaks my heart!

Even as I type this out, I'm in tears.  It's heartbreaking to think ahead about all the changes that 2012 will likely hold for our family, to think about the trials that we still have ahead of us, and to realize that unless there is some medical miracle in the field of memory loss, JB's disease will continue to slowly, ever so cruelly, take him away from us. 

Of course, we don't know what the next year holds, and we certainly don't know what next Christmas will be like for our family, so I'm trying to focus on the positive and am feeling blessed and thankful for a great Christmas this year with my family.