(This may be a little disjointed)
I think back to the last Christmas my mother was alive. It was 1999. I smoked for 40 years so yes, I was a smoker when I lost her.
She knew she was losing her health when it became harder and harder to climb the back stairs. I lived a hundred miles away, was self employed and had to do estimates on the weekends, so, I wasn't aware of any of this.
She told us in August on the way home from a cousins wedding that 9 years before, when she had led a tour group to England, she felt extremely ill when she landed at home and during the trip.
She went to her Dr., and he told her that she had contracted a virus that attacks the heart, most likely on the plane to England. He also told her that she had ten years to live.
She kept this to herself until the end of the 9th year when she couldn't climb the back stairs easily.
So she knew that the upcoming Christmas would be her last one as her heart was now failing quickly.
She never smoked.
I used to travel the hundred miles south with Linda and Jessie at least a couple times a month for 5 months to see her. Sometimes she was home and more often in the hospital. I remember having the need to go outside to smoke.
I was the general contractor on a job in Santa Monica when I got a call on a Tuesday that they were going to stop giving her the meds. She was getting so anxious that she wouldn't get them in time and panicing, that they both decided this quality of life was not worth her daily struggle. I asked him if they could wait to put her on hospice until Friday so we could come down and be with her.
I got to spend a couple hours alone with her. I sang for her. I told her how much I loved her and all that she'd done just for me during my teens and asked her forgiveness for some things I'd done.
The next morning at 10am, she was gone
What I really wanted to tell you is that last Christmas, she was as full of life as ever. She got up with one of her brothers and danced a jig. She sat and listened intently as I sang O Holy Night, which had become a family tradition long before then.
She didn't choose to be sad. She loved God. She knew where she was going.
She chose to make the very best of her last Christmas.
Choose LIFE don't smoke. there is no reason large enough.
Merry Christmas Love you mom
