One year, we decided to pass the new year eve in an uncle’s house at some god forsaken hole with our dog. After a neverending trip during wich our dog farted in the car, we finally arrive. The said uncle was a radical ecologist, wich is not a problem per se, except when his only conversation subject is about the ecological collapse, not the ideal subject for a good atmosphere, with in addition to that my sister’s BF, who was with us, doing his Mr. know-it-all show. Then we went to sleep, and i realize that i forgot my earplugs. No luck, everyone in my family was snoring very loudly, including the dog. Result: i didn’t sleep at all and looked pretty much like a zombie the next morning.
My worst Christmas was walking out of a vets office with an empty cat carrier after Picatso lost a long fight with feline lekuma. I was maybe 10-11, and I remember when my mom and I got into the car just bawling our eyes out.
One year the entire family got a stomach flu over the Christmas holidays. The kids were around 3-6 years old and didn’t know to puke in a bucket in the night; they just vomited all over the bedsheets each time. We nearly ran out of sheets and had to load the washing machine in the middle of the night to keep up, while taking breaks to puke and shit. My diarrhea was so bad that my blood pressure dropped while sitting on the toilet, so immediately after dropping a load I had to lie down on the floor to avoid passing out, only to pull myself up seconds later to puke in the (now diarrhea-filled) toilet bowl. Meanwhile I hear the kids crying and puking outside and my then wife being pissed that I’m not helping.
I was a kid, I wanna say fifth grade? Anyway, I had to wake up at the crack of dawn to drive to my dad’s mom’s house. I hated both that woman and the house. We made it there around ten or so. Then my dad excused himself, like, a hour after we arrived, leaving my mom and me with his mom, who hated us both in equal measure for ruining her son’s life.
He didn’t come back until well past midnight.
I had fallen asleep in the couch and woke up to the fight in the living room. My mother was devastated, and hurt that he left us (he was our ride home), and that it was for drugs or whatever hood shit he was up to. Even after we packed up in the car, he made a pit stop to pick up some drugs for the road and my mother was sobbing in the car. I was trying to comfort but I made it worse, so I just held her hand from the back seat.
They screamed and fought in the car for nearly an hour. I was terrified he was going to pull us into traffic because he was getting so angry. We ended up pulling over and my mom sobbed in the gas station parking lot, screaming at him to just give a fuck. He walked off to smoke and I was able to calm my my down because she could see I was freaking out and she loved me more than she hated him and calmed herself down in my behalf.
The ride home was silent. We got home and it was nearly dawn. My mom made me a snack and then sent me to bed. I didn’t fall asleep for a few hours because I was worried he would do something to my mom. When I was sure he was out, I went to sleep.
Highlight: They got me an Enya CD (don’t judge me) so the initial ride there was actually quite nice. My mom was actually very excited that morning. She was excited to have a family Christmas.
Probably the one where my dad died two days before Xmas. The upside was being last minute invited into my extended family’s celebrations. After spending two days in hospitals, in shock and mourning walking into a warm, cheery home with food and love will always be a cherished memory in what was otherwise the worst episode of my life.
My grandfather would regularly mess up managing his diabetes nearly every Christmas we spent with him and end up in a diabetic rage. I honestly couldn’t recount any single one of his diabetic rages because they’ve all kind of congealed together in my head over time.
Three parts that stand out though:
- One of the rages was set off because he couldn’t find the pen he had been using to track his blood sugar levels (he liked to use one pen from new to dried out) so he had to use a new one.
- One of them, my father had to step between my grandfather and my mother and stare my grandfather down because my grandfather was fixing to beat my mother.
- One of them, someone in the family called the police on my grandfather because of his shit.
Those may have been all the same incident, but I remember the rages happening on more than one Christmas.
It’s hard to square that shit with all the good memories I had with him. I’ve learned over the years that he was a shit father before he had grandkids too. But he was (excepting the diabetic rages) a good grandfather to me and my cousins.
Life can be weird like that.
