My Last Christmas with Mom

My fondest Christmas memory

In September, 2012, my brother and I helped move my mother, age 91, to her own apartment in a retirement home in Rochester, just five minutes from me. A month or so later, she suffered compression fractures in her spine. COPD and a heart condition then took a toll. Before we knew it, Thelma had a pacemaker, was wheelchair bound and on oxygen. Still of sound mind, however, Christmas shopping concerned her. So, on a sunny weekday before we were inundated with show, I packed her up with her oxygen tank and wheelchair, and took her Christmas shopping at Carson’s at the Village of Rochester Hills.

Shopping fun

She hadn’t been out to a store for a few years. She would purchase gifts as well as her own clothing from an impressive selection of catalogs she received in the mail. So, for this Christmas, I enjoyed wheeling her all around the department store; she pointed and I pushed. She enjoyed shopping in the little girl’s department for her great-granddaughter Lillian, who was just four, because she could browse through the racks of clothes herself. I remember how pleased she was to pick a spring outfit complete with a matching coat for Lillian.

Then we got a bite to eat and headed home. She was tired, but happy. In the following weeks, I wrapped gifts for her at her place so she could see everything. She insisted on signing the gift cards herself.

Christmas Day

On Christmas day, the aides at Sunrise dressed her in her favorite, red cardinal Christmas sweater, blue jeans, and fuzzy purple slippers, which always earned her compliments. I picked her up and brought her to our house. We wheeled her to our sliding glass door in the back, and my son, son-in-law and husband lifted her up the three steps, wheelchair and all, to bring her inside. I feared they might spill her, but there was no need to worry; she barely weighed 95 pounds.

It was such a joy to have her as a guest at our house after spending so many holidays at her house in Ohio– she was still cooking a full course meal (always beef tenderloin) for the family when she was in her late eighties. 2011 was the last Christmas we had at her house; we opted for an easy dinner with IKEA meatballs and frozen mashed potatoes, since she was using a cane after breaking her pelvis.

She peacefully passed away ten months later (obit)  in her home at Sunrise. I’m forever grateful for that last Christmas, and that last year our family had with her here in Michigan.

Thank you for visiting.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist:
Multi-finalist award winning novel In the Context of Love
Picture book Gordy and the Ghost Crab
Latest poetry chapbook: Sleepwalker

Connect with Linda: LinkTree