I have a love/hate relationship with December.

I love Christmas and everything that comes with it: the lights, songs, decorations, and the over "jolly holiday" ridiculousness.

Love it.

But I also have a problem with December.

December 22, to be exact.

The day Grandma died.

Grandma was the heart of our family, but also someone I deeply relied on. She was the mediator, peacekeeper, and often the buffer between my mother and me.

Mom and I loved each other; we just...didn't always understand each other back then.

Grandma had this way of making things better while never making a big production out of it.

And at that time in my life, I needed her more than ever. My marriage was over, my finances were in the toilet, and I was living with my grandparents again.

Not exactly how I'd pictured my thirties, but there I was.

By August of 2011, something was off with Grandma. Normally, she was pretty vibrant and energetic; she had the usual old-age complaints, of course, but something was different.

She was tired and started getting headaches, still chalking it all up to getting older.

Then she changed.

Once always, sometimes annoyingly positive and encouraging, she'd become irritable and withdrawn.

I'll never forget a particularly beautiful afternoon when she was slumped at her dining table, sunlight streaming in, her head in her hands, looking completely defeated.

That was not my grandmother, and I knew something was wrong.

She saw doctors but made my grandfather and me promise not to breathe a word to anyone, especially her two children. Nobody could figure out what was wrong, and she didn't want anyone worrying about her.

How like her.

But as her health deteriorated, we know keeping this secret was ridiculous. Grandpa wanted to tell but was afraid of 'betraying' her.

I remember him saying, "I've got a big yellow streak up my back right now," but with his permission, I finally told my mother, who told her brother.

I said Grandma could think whatever she wanted about my decision; I could take it.

It all went about how you'd expect.

Shortly after, Grandma was rushed to the hospital where scans revealed a massive brain tumor that needed immediate surgery.

Five-plus hours of surgery later, the doctors said they'd removed as much of it as they could. Which meant it was worse than we'd thought.

Glioblastoma.

The words "aggressive and terminal" landed like a bomb in the middle of our little huddle with the doctor.

Before the surgery, the doctors asked Grandma who she wanted making medical decisions for her if she couldn't make them herself.

She chose me, and I don't for a second think there was anything particularly symbolic about that. Grandma was always practical as hell.

Except I was in my thirties, a single mother, and knew exactly jack shit about glioblastoma.

But Grandma knew her family well and that we all loved her fiercely. What she wanted was someone who would make the hard decisions anyway.

Now, why she thought that was me, I'll never understand.

All I do know is that it changed everything.

A doctor acquaintance of mine told me straight that glioblastoma was a death sentence, and the kindest thing we could do was take Grandma home and let her spend whatever time she had on her terms.

I agreed, and so did my mother and stepfather.

My grandfather and others wanted to pursue treatment. And that whole she picked me because I could make hard decisions thing became very real.

If I disagreed with my grandfather, he said I was "giving up on her," and if I went along with it, I wasn't doing what she'd trusted me to do.

I was told her tumor was terminal, yet there I had doctors talking about treatment, and a family wanting to fight. I had no way of knowing just how fast it would take her.

In my ear, I had my grandfather, who knew this woman better than anyone, telling me she would want to fight.

And there I was, knowing just enough to be scared and not nearly enough to be certain. Even the medical advice kept changing on us.

Exquisite setup for a confident decision.

And that sliver of doubt was all it took to keep that whole shitshow going.

Maybe I was too hopeful. Maybe I was trying to be the peacemaker in a time I was trusted to be anything but.

I know now I'd take her home immediately. But I didn't.

I live with that.

Unfortunately, while I was sweating over every decision, my uncle's wife, The Barracuda, had no qualms.

She bulldozed her way into medical conversations and decisions that were never hers to make, constantly invoking her looong-past LPN experience as though it entitled her to a place on Grandma's care team. It didn't.

Especially since Grandma never wanted her advice.

The Barracuda challenged my role as medical proxy, inserted herself into decisions that weren't hers to make, and at one point tried to remove my mother and me as Grandma's primary contacts and put herself in our place.

She also openly questioned Grandma's capacity right in front of her.

That woman made my dying grandmother cry in the hospital.

I will never forget that.

Grandma spent years bending over backwards for people she loved, especially her family, especially my uncle and The Barracuda. She never asked much in return, but in the end, showing her a little respect was just too much, I guess.

Lest this sound like years of resentment clouding my memory, Grandma's actual care team pulled me aside themselves because The Barracuda had gotten so disruptive that they told me to put a stop to it.

Which should have been my uncle's job, but he deferred to his wife every time.

Mysteriously, their minister got involved, someone none of us had asked for and had no place there.

Someone who told my grandfather that God could still perform a miracle if He wanted to.

What the ever-loving fuck.

Look, I walk in faith, and all that, but here was this stranger telling us all that maybe - just maybe - God would swoop in like the Avengers and save the day.

Of course Grandpa held right onto that; who wouldn't in his situation?

My uncle and The Barracuda galvanized that hope to where reality was now me "being negative and having no faith".

I remember far more than what I’m choosing to include right now.

That day will come.

November.

This was when treatments were supposed to begin, but instead it became a clusterfuck of setbacks and eternally conflicting information.

All the while, something inside me was screaming to stop this insanity, already.

But Grandpa was adamant that Grandma would want to fight, and I believe she would have, had there actually been something to fight for.

By mid-November, the tumor was already coming back.

By December 1st, it was over twice its original size and still growing.

Well, fuck.

All those weeks of debating, questioning my judgment, and trying to figure out the right thing to do, and the damn tumor had been lapping us the whole time.

So much for miracles.

I was sick knowing my instincts had been right.

I live with that, too.

We finally took Grandma home. We wheeled her inside and brought her to her beloved organ. She'd spent years playing, so it just seemed right that she see that first.

I put her finger on one of the keys. She pressed it and started tapping out a Christmas song, one note at a time, silently mouthing the words.

I wish I could remember the song.

My mother moved in, and I took leave from work. Between us, we handled the round-the-clock care. We knew what was happening, but we didn't have the slightest idea what we were doing.

And because it was December, and Grandma loved Christmas, we put up all her favorite decorations and tried to make it feel as normal and festive as she always had.

Festive.

There was tinsel and holly, stars and angels juxtaposed against her deathbed, feeding tube, bed pads, and our whiteboard with medications and sleep shifts.

All that decorating was the right thing to do. Grandma deserved to be surrounded by things she loved in the home where she wanted to die.

But it made me nauseous.

I hated how cheerful everything looked. I hated everything festive. I hated that Christmas was coming, and I really hated that we were so optimistic that Grandma would make it to Christmas.

Maybe even New Year's.

We had absolutely no evidence to suggest otherwise, but Grandma had always been a strong woman, and surely, after all she'd gone through, she'd get at least one last Christmas with her husband and kids.

On December 22, 2011, Grandma died.

But someone managed to make the worst day of our lives even worse.

After months of being at Grandma's side for appointments, hospital stays, and eventually round-the-clock care, my grandfather, my mother, and I were all in the house when Grandma died.

I was in the kitchen making something for my daughter. Mom was with me. Grandpa had stepped away for a few minutes.

My uncle was the only one at Grandma's side. When she died, he never came to get anyone. He never called, "Hey, you might want to come in here".

The Barracuda had instructed him to stay quiet and call her so that she could come over and 'verify' Grandma's death to the family.

So that's what he did.

By the time he told us Grandma was gone, she'd already been long gone.

And I...was furious.

The Barracuda had spent months wrangling for control and a spotlight, and in one cruel decision, she got both at Grandpa's expense.

Fifteen years later, I'm still furious. Not so much for me (although, yeah) but for Grandpa. He'd spent months barely leaving his wife's side, becoming shockingly thin himself.

He missed his chance to hold her hand and say goodbye as she passed because The Barracuda decided he didn't need to be there.

I know exactly why it happened.

I've never forgiven it, and I don't care about pretending otherwise.

Christmas Day.

I sat with my daughter as she opened presents, trying to give her something resembling a normal Christmas morning.

My attention kept drifting to Grandpa, sitting off to the side in his chair, cross-legged in a bathrobe, looking sickly thin and absolutely furious at God, his son, The Barracuda, probably the entire universe by that point.

And we still had a funeral to plan.

I was right there with him, and I would have skipped Christmas with no problem whatsoever, but I had a child. She adored her great-grandparents and knew Grandma was gone, but she was still just a little girl.

She deserved presents and Christmas and some semblance of normal memories I could cobble together for her that day, so I did what most parents do: sucked it up and compartmentalized.

Eventually we learned why Grandpa had been losing so much weight: advanced-stage cancer.

But at least this time we knew a few things we hadn't known with Grandma, and he made it crystal clear he intended to fight.

He fought his cancer while grieving his wife, insisting all the while that it was what she would have told him to do, which he did until he just couldn't anymore.

Grandpa died on November 11, 2013. This time, we were right there with him.

Ten days later, on November 21, 2013, my stepfather died of a heart attack. I didn't make it to him in time.

Again.

After that, I stopped looking forward to the holidays for a long time.

It's been many years since I lost most of my immediate family. It feels like a lifetime ago, and sometimes, like it just happened.

A lot's changed since then.

Our family never recovered. My uncle stopped answering the phone, and eventually we stopped calling.

My life, though, became something I couldn't have imagined back then.

I met my husband, The Blakan Storm, and we married in 2015. I built a home and a life that my family spent so many years assuring me I would have someday while I remained thoroughly unconvinced.

And none of them got to share it.

Grandma never got to meet my husband, and I know she would have loved him. None of them were there when I got married again. They never got to realize that despite all the mess of my twenties and thirties, I was finally going to be okay.

That's some bullshit, ain't it?

I am so grateful for my life. Deeply grateful. But a part of me is still pissed.

I wish they could've seen it.

I wish Grandma could have met him. I wish Grandpa could've sat at my wedding and known I was safe and happy. I wish Dad could've seen the life I made, knowing it was everything and more he thought possible.

But they didn't, and every December reminds me of that.

But I still love Christmas, and put up lights, and fuss over all the stupid little details.

But on the 22nd of December, I remember that other December, and all the people who should still be here.

I hate admitting a Marvel character may have summed this up better than I ever could, but to quote Vision: ‘What is grief, if not love persevering?”

Mine sure has.

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And always will.

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