Lisa Wright – Writer

We don’t think this is her last Christmas with us, but then again, maybe her last Christmas was a few years back and we didn’t understand. She is our mother, although it feels like there is a stranger at the table, with scared eyes and fidgety hands. An illness of the mind, but we dare not speak its name in her presence. She has always believed that mental illness is a dirty ailment; an affliction; she once said my own depression must have been inherited from my father.

She can barely turn her stiff and largely immobile body to watch her grandchildren choose Secret Santa presents from under the tree. When my sister and I select one for her, she squeezes the wrapping, and places it back on the dining table, uninterested, while we all lean in, waiting for the uncovering of the paper to reveal the contents. I help her remove the Christmas wrap and ribbon, and hold up with crystal ornament, to which she distastefully says, “I’ve got one’. An uncomfortable silence falls on the group. 

The happy conversation begins again, a little louder and somewhat forced to cover up the awkwardness of the moment, and she recedes into the background once more. She is the guest that is fundamentally invisible to most of our family. She is too hard to include and too easy to ignore. She sits in the one chair all day, while her pale, green, watery eyes track the movements of her great-grandson playing quietly under the tree. I remember how engaged she was with my own children at his age. I mourn that this little tacker will not know that she knew all the words to Toy Story and that the best pasta should be naked with only grated cheese. 

My siblings and I care for our mother; but at a time when we should be linking together to help her into this painful and tragic ending, we are each isolated in our grief that she’s essentially gone already. We often don’t agree on the best way forward, and crash into each other with inadequate suggestions about her best care plan. I was there on a day when I had to demand she allowed her infirm beloved dog to be put to rest. She hated me that day and that hate seethed through her teeth and her clenched fists. I knew it was her 80 something year old heart that was breaking. Somehow, I wished it was my mind that was failing so I could forget that day. Her and I have not mended our connection since. 

The 25^th has past and we have retreated to our homes and look at photos taken from the day. With silly hats, table groaning with sweating food in the hot Queensland summer, and beach towels hung on backs of chairs, we can’t help but notice the ghost at the table. I think her eyes betray the fear that must be behind them. Maybe, she doesn’t know who we are at all? Or maybe she is wondering why she is in this strange house of the woman who took her dog away.