Your Christmas tragedies.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

My great-great grandmother died on Christmas Eve. According to my grandfather, she was a thoroughly nasty, unlikable person and probably did so out of spite.

I found out my favorite aunt and my godmother had a drinking problem right around holiday break when I was eleven, and then she ended up in rehab by New Year’s.

It was the last day of school, and she was coming to pick my cousin up and saw me going for the bus, and offered to drive me home. My principal was standing right there, so she said it was all right (normally, you had to have a note from your parents if your getting home transportation changed).

Well, I got home, my aunt left, and my mother acted really strange. This wasn’t the first time my aunt had offered to take me home, and as long as I told my teacher and the principal, my parents never minded. But my mother kept saying, “You shouldn’t do that, you didn’t have a note!” “But Mom, Sr. Roberta was right there and-” “I don’t care! Don’t do that again!”

Later on, I overheard her talking to my dad, and I heard her say, “I could smell it on her breath.” Well, a few days later, my parents came and told me that for a long time, my aunt had been an alcoholic, and that the day she drove me home, my mother could tell she had been drinking.

So, fast forward to about two days after Xmas, and we get a call from my grandparents. Apparently, she ended up over at their house, completely breaking down, and they convinced her to check into the hospital for detox and go to AA. She called me on New Years Day, and told me she loved me, etc. And things were going really well-she was getting better, going to AA, and everything was working out…

Except apparently not. Now, this was in April, but basically the years of damage to her liver and her body from alcohol abuse were only beginning to heal, and she was at a really weak stage, physically. She got the flu, and in her weakened system, she couldn’t handle it, and my cousin came home to find his two-year-old sister trying to “wake-up” her mother.
He called 9-11, and my uncle later took him and his sister to my other aunt’s place to stay the night. My mother told me what happened and just to pray really hard.

Later on that evening, my dad came out where I was sitting on the swing, and told me she died.

I don’t know if that counts as a “Xmas” tragedy, but I think it was kind of the last really good Christmas in our extended family. And I don’t think my grandparents ever got over it.

22

While we were opening the presents on Christmas morning our next door neighbor lady came banging on the door and screaming like a banshee; the pit bull belonging to our other next door neighbor had trapped and started to kill our one-year-old cat Punkin, who struggled away just long enough to get up her tree. He bled to death up there before we could get him down.

23

I’ve been mulling this over, and I think I’m going to move this thread and the one that inspired it.

Moved from IMHO to MPSIMS.

24

Okay, the Christmas Tree Story.

Christmas 1987. I was seventeen. For as long as I’d been alive, we’d had a fake tree, but for whatever reason, this year my parents decided to get a live one. We were living in a condo at the time, which bears on the story further on.

So it’s morning, and it’s Christmas vacation. I forget if it’s the first day, but it’s vacation. The TV is on, my mom and dad and I are flitting in and out of the kitchen, getting our breakfasts (we rarely had meals together), I’m still in my robe, and my dad starts putting the tree into the stand. Cozy scene, right?

And it was, for a little while. Then, very abruptly, my dad starts cursing and banging the tree stand against the floor. The tree won’t stand upright, you see. My mom starts yelling back at him, and I head for the basement.

More yelling from upstairs, then my mom flings the door open, sobbing, “Get up here! Get up here!” Well, I don’t want to get up there. I’ve been in the middle of enough of these scenes. What am I supposed to do, anyway? I brush past my mom and back to the first floor.

As I’m passing by him in the living room, my dad, now perfectly calm, says, “Why’n’t you live somewhere else, Rilch?” I growl something to the effect of “I fucking well will,” and head for the front door. My mom intercepts me before I can get it open. Much screaming and yelling that ends with me shrieking, “Don’t you understand? It’s NOT MY PROBLEM!” I head up the stairs. I don’t know where I’d been planning to go in my robe, but I figure I’ll get dressed, get out and then figure out where I’ll go.

In my room, I throw on jeans, a sweater, socks and sneakers, and get some petty cash out of wherever I kept it. Three minutes, tops. But when I open the door, I find my mom’s fat ass planted on a chair directly in front of it. She’s blocking the doorway; she’s filling up the whole doorway. Still crying, she informs me that I’m not going anywhere.

Oh, yes, I am. I squeeze past her and she presses further into the doorway. I climb over her, and I almost make it, but now she’s clawing at my arm. I get past her and she tackles me.

I think I’m yelling now, because she’s trying to cover my mouth with her hand. Her arm is right in front of my mouth, and I close my teeth on it, but stop because…well, this is my mother, and I hate her right now, but I don’t hate her, you know? Anyway, I give that up and concentrate on just getting the hell away and out. I start crawling, but it’s hard to crawl with 200 pounds of psycho bitch on your back.

I’m about halfway to the stairs when my dad comes up and stands watching us, roaring with laughter. My mom sits up and redirects her aggression at him, but while still pinning my arms behind my back. Then the doorbell rings, accompanied by pounding.

Remember I said we lived in a condo? The unit next door was occupied by an ER doc, who pounded on my bedroom wall if I played my stereo above four. I don’t know at what point she’d dialed 911; I don’t know if it was out of concern for us or for her sleep cycle.

But at any rate, you wouldn’t believe how fast Mama and Papa Rilch transformed into beleaguered parents whose daughter had “problems”. The officers accepted that and left. Afterwards, my mom showed me the teeth marks on her arm and said, “I could have you committed for that. Watch it.”

I went back to my room, waited about half an hour, then snuck downstairs again and out the front door. No one tried to stop me this time, and I spent a few hours at my friend’s house. He and his mom had been through this before with me, and tried to get me to call child welfare, but as I said, I was seventeen, and intervention at this stage might screw up my chances of getting to college and thence the hell out. I went back home, the tree was in the stand, and no one spoke to each other until the next morning.

Anyway, that’s why I don’t like a live tree. Sorry I couldn’t make it funny, like Sampiro does.

25

Not exactly a tragedy, but I haven’t spoken to my paternal grandparents since 1989 or so. I posted this a few years ago in this thread. It’s now been 15 or 16 years since I last spoke to my grandparents, and I’ve only spoken to my father once since that post, because I happened to run into him one day in a grocery store. It’s a bit more poignant this year, as SmithWife just lost her maternal grandmother before thanksgiving, her maternal grandfather a few years ago, and here I am carrying this grudge around like a frickin’ hair shirt for 16 years. Oh, well. I’ll see them in hell, I guess, so I’ve got that to look forward to.

26

Okay, picture this – 7-year-old child with stars in her eyes on Christmas morning. The day I’d been awaiting for months. Unbenownst to me, my gift is a Habitrail with a wonderful little pet inside. In my excitement I hurriedly open the little gate to allow my precious pet to get to know me, his response was to take a huge chunk out of my finger.

Within an hour we were at the emergency room and I had to have a tetanus shot. Those hurt, btw.

Not my best holiday, but it definitely is a mind-seared memory. I have a hamster now, Peanut, who fortunately is the sweetest little thing ever. I’m sad that I had the hell-spawn that was my first hamster hinder my future proclivity to rodents.

27

I just found out about this and have been more than a little depressed so maybe this is the palce to mull it over. At the request of his family, I’m not going to mention how I know this person because they’d like his identity to remain undisclosed. His name isn’t Joe, so that’s what I’ll call him.

Joe is originally from the UK but has been here in the states for the last decade or so. He’s extremely bright and a gifted athlete, competing sucessfully in races and amassing an enviable collection of trophies. He’s a tough nut too, camping outdoors in Yosemite in the middle of winter. Damn likeable guy.

A few months back, Joe started compaining of dizzyness. Then his manner, his overall demeanor seemed to change. We worried that maybe a nervous breakdown was coming and our concern grew. Doctors were puzzled and he returned to the UK for more tests and rest.

Joe’s in a coma there now and exhibits only spastic, jerky movement. He’s the second case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the US, BSE, although he certainly contracted it as a youth in the UK. It’s 100% fatal and I’m so saddened by what his family is going through this holiday season.

28

I’m so glad that Rilchiam knew enough to start a thread for the people that want to post bad experiences. It’s not fare to train wreck another poster’s good thread. A thread like this one gives the holiday bummed out a place to post in mutual comiseration.

I decided to not post stuff on this board that has to do with my missing years from this board. Illness.

I know saturday would suck , not because of me, rather because of my mother.
She spent most of the day making me want to scream. About 15:00 I got what I knew was coming in some form or other.
Mother “You do remember your father died 8 years ago today don’t you!” Me “Yes, and what did you want me to do about it?”
Mother “Nothing.”
Me “Well, OK then.”

Condolences not needed. Have a Merry Holiday! :cool:

29

:cool: I hope you didn’t lose sleep while you mulled. :smiley:

30

In May 1993 I had my first child, Kelly Elizabeth. Shortly after she was born, we learned she had a heart defect, which could be repaired with surgery. The condition is called Tetralogy of Fallot, for any of you who might know what this is.

As the months went by, she failed to gain weight and it became apparent she wasn’t growing and thriving. I thought surgery would ‘fix’ her. When she began to lose weight in December, her cardiologist told us it was time for the surgery.

She went into open-heart surgery Dec. 29, 1993. The defect was repaired, but she was not strong enough to recover and never came off the ventilator. She died later that night. We buried her on Dec. 31 and for years I have had a hard time with Christmas. But that has been tempered by joy; just a year after her death, my daughter Claire was born. I think I was able to withstand the iron grief of that first year after losing her, knowing a new life was growing within me.

I now have three beautiful children, but the pain of losing Kelly, my first child, was immense and I’ll never be over it. It cast a bittersweet shadow over the holidays. Now I just remember her, and it’s not unbearable. We’ve had many happy memories since 1993.

Epilogue: An autopsy revealed she had a genetic defect which caused the heart problem, as well as what surely would have been profound mental retardation had she lived. I’m grateful for her short sweet little life, but happy that she didn’t have to live a longer life in discomfort of any sort. I’m comforted that my Dad was waiting for her in heaven when she left us, and welcomed her from our arms into his.

31

This is a beautiful and peaceful manner for comfort and I am so very glad you have found some peace.

32

I posted happy memories of 70s Christmas toys in the other thread, so I guess I can also mention my saddest Christmas so far, in 1979.

I was 12. My brother was 9 and had battled cystic fibrosis since birth. Until age 7 or so he was, if not healthy, at least functioning like a normal kid, fond of baseball, superheroes, and jigsaw puzzles. But during the past year he had taken to his room more and more often, and by Christmas he had already missed months of 4th grade (after 67 absences in 3rd grade…still top of the class, though).

My family open presents on Christmas Eve, after an “afternoon nap” of a couple of hours to let Santa do his thing. We all dress up, march to the room where the tree is, ooh and aah at the newly appeared presents, sing some carols, and start clawing at the wrapping paper. It’s fun. But that year my brother, too weak to dress up and wearing a track suit, didn’t last five minutes before a severe coughing fit forced him back upstairs to his room to rest. My parents tried to keep Christmas merry for me and my sister (age 7), but gloom prevailed.

On Christmas Day my parents took him to the Children’s Hospital about 50 miles away, leaving me and my sister with friends (we did manage one visit to the hospital during the next week). He died on January 3, 1980 and was buried in the Denver Broncos T-shirt I’d given him for Christmas.

33

My grandmother died Christmas Day, 1980. I was four at the time. She had been sick for a long time with lung cancer and other problems, but I always felt terrible for my grandfather at Christmas after that, even though we usually were there. He lived until 2002, and that’s a lot of Christmases to spend remembering your dead wife.

34

{{{dopers}}}

35

There have been many, but the ones that most standout are all from the late 1980s.

1985- My mother and I were so broke we couldn’t afford to buy gifts for each other, let alone others. We actually declined an invitation to spend the day at my brother’s house because we were too embarassed (in a very materialist family, I’m afraid to say) to show up at his home without presents, but at the time it was a good month when we could keep the electricity connected.
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve we received some completely unexpected money when a neighbor repaid a loan we’d long since written off. It wasn’t a lot by our standards now (about $100) but it was enough to get a few gifts. We got to Montgomery, the nearest city of any size, at about 5 p.m. and shopped until the stores closed (6 p.m.) for a few inexpensive gifts for relatives. Because of the speed and the late hour and the fact that the money had to cover gas (we were B-ROKE!) and get us through til the first of January, we didn’t buy gifts for each other, even though we were each who the other loved most by far. We each wrapped some things from the house (books and what not) to give each other on Christmas Day at my brother’s house so that it wouldn’t seem too conspicuous that we didn’t exchange gifts. My brother and sister gave both of us clothes, and even though we liked them we took them back to the stores the next day to get the cash because we were that hard up.

1986- Broke continues. That year my mother had written a check for gasoline ($10) that bounced. Since we didn’t have a telephone and the address on the check was wrong (we hadn’t moved, but the mailing address had changed when they rezoned the rural routes) the storeowner wasn’t able to get in touch with us and, even though my mother had done thousands of dollars worth of business with her over the years, my mother was arrested at our home on December 23. But things weren’t all bad: they repossessed our car at the same time. Oh wait— yeah, things did kind of suck donkeys.

1987- We were finally out of Weokahatchee Alabama and we were living in Montgomery, thinking that our troubles were behind us. We were still broke, but less so- we didn’t have to worry about bouncing checks for $10, but we weren’t much above that. My mother had been involved in a lawsuit with her “sorry sonofabitch may he sizzle like catfish in the cast iron skillet of Lucifer” brother over monies from their father’s estate (he claimed it was about $2500- in truth my mother had embezzled from the estate [because she was absolutely desperate {see above}] but it was closer to $300 [which we didn’t have anyway]). that he claimed had never been paid to him. My mother, unable to hire a lawyer, was ruled against and ordered to pay him $1,400 (less than the amount he sued for but it may as well have been $140,000 to us at the time) and since she didn’t have it she didn’t pay it. One year to the day after her last arrest (December 23), as we were eating breakfast and talking about how for the time first in years maybe Christmas wouldn’t suck, there was a knock on the door and the Montgomery County sherriff arrested my mother (he was horribly sorry and embarassed to do so too, I must add), took her to the neighboring county where the verdict was rendered, and she remained in jail, technically not charged with anything (today I’d raise so much hell you wouldn’t believe it but at the time I was 20 and didn’t know what to do exactly) and held there, able to communicate with one collect phone call.

Having no money and no way of getting any, I had to go ask my brother for help. I decided to drive down in person to his house (80 miles away) and I took with me an unregistered .22 caliber pistol. Had he not been home or had he refused to help (which he could well have done- he can be a total asshole at times, especially where our mother is concerned) I planned to visit my sister (who would probably have helped but only after a 19 hour lecture on what generally poor relations my mother and I were until I felt three inches high) and if she hadn’t, I was going to use the pistol either to rob a liquor store in a city I’d never been to before (so that I would be less of a suspect) to get money for a lawyer (she was denied bail- MAN, that judge was the biggest asshole this side of King Kong’s rectum). Failing that, I was going to go to Birmingham, sneak into my uncle’s house, shoot him and his wife to death in their sleep, ride as fast as my Yugo would carry me back to Montgomery and be at work at 5:00 a.m., for I wouldn’t be suspected and my mother being the most likely suspect had an airtight alibi.
If this sounds psychotic, I was at the time. And luckily my brother helped- his best friend at the time was a lawyer and she was released on Christmas Day. He asked her to come to his house for Christmas dinner and after the warden told her she couldn’t stay there (not making it up) she agreed. (This is why my mother later drank a toast to the brain cancer that killed her brother.)

To end on an up note, a few months before this Christmas I saw a 14k ankh ring in a pawn shop. I was in a New Age phase at the time and fell in love with it, but it’s price tag (“about a hundred dollars…yeh, about a hundred dollars…”) was unaffordable at the time. The next year, about fourteen months after I first saw the ring, it was Christmas 1988, and I saw my mother for only about five minutes as I passed off the Yugo to her when I returned from and she departed for my brother’s house (we only had one car and we worked different shifts so we went down in shifts to horse’s ass’s house, 100% because we felt a feeling of responsibility for his providing a lawyer the year before and helping us pay off my mother’s asshole brother). As we passed off the car she gave me her present, a small cardboard box that held, of course, the ring. She had put it on lay-a-way and paid a few dollars a month on it for most of a year (because even though she was working 70 hours a week and I was working more than 40, we were that broke). I’m wearing that ring as I write this. It’s my favorite possession and the one I look at when my mother drives me crazy and I find myself wondering “Why in the hell do I love this woman?”

36

Damn, Sampiro, you’re a really good son. I hope your mom realizes how lucky she is.

37

A long time ago, but still chilling to recall. I went down to Sun City outside Phoenix, to take care of my great-uncle. He lived alone and was suffering from multiple health problems. I was in my early 20s, unemployed, and I thought that a trip to a sunny area would be nice. The whole time I was there, he ragged on me about this and that. Eventually, we just basically stopped talking with each other. I sat out in the sun, fixed him meals, watched TV, and walked around the neighborhood. In fact, I was out for a walk when I got back to find police and ambulances surrounding his condo. He had called the police, then shot himself. He died immediately. Not a very merry Christmas, and certainly one I won’t forget.

38

My father died on Dec. 22 the year I was five (heart attack). At a Xmas program, where I was supposed to recite “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” which I had worked very hard on. My parents dropped me off,I went back stage, and we were all peeking out the curtains to see our parents. First my mother is sitting there by herself, and I’m thinking where’s my dad? Then I peek out again–she’s now missing, too. This is wrong. Then my teacher comes and takes me back past a fire engine and a rescue squad, to where my mother supposedly is, only she’s not–my father was taken to the hospital and she went with him. I went home with a friend, didn’t see my mother again until the next day, when she told me, and I just didn’t get it. I thought it was all going to happen over again, only right–I would get to recite “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” and my daddy would be out there watching me and mouthing the words like he did when I practiced, and everything would be all right. But no.

Nor did the vaunted saint show up that year (I think there was some line like “out of respect Santa doesn’t come to houses with black wreaths on the door”…something like that) but that pretty much did it for Santa.

One year later. This year there IS a Santa Claus, my mother is trying to hold it together although the one-year anniversary is, for her, very difficult, and I’m very skeptical (this Santa person just shows up when he wants to–really, the jig was pretty much up the year before although I wanted to believe, I surely did). I wake up on Xmas morning to check out my stocking and in the cold gray light of dawn I see that my parakeet is lying on the floor of his cage, not moving. Okay, Xmas (BTW I pronounce this “exmuss”), that was your last chance.

There followed several dreary years of Decembers when my mother would (understandably) get depressed and do things like accidentally take too many of her sleeping pills or eat too much holiday candy (she MADE the stuff) and go into a diabetic coma…their anniversary was New Year’s Day so it was a double whammy for her.

I have redeemed the month, somewhat, by giving birth to one of my children in December. I did not do that on purpose but it has helped.