Christmas Charades

Present time - sharing memories

Christmas Table!

We had a good Christmas Day. Roch enjoyed his meal (that's seven Christmas meals since diagnosis, although now we feed him) and joined in a game of charades afterwards, to our great delight! This is not an easy thing to do, when you have to use one hand to lift the fingers of the other, offering spasticated clues as to the number of words or syllables involved. I think he would agree that the whole enterprise was pretty hilarious and he had us in stitches (mostly deliberately).

"Five Words!"

I failed to anticipate just how tiring Christmas preparations would be, combined with the demands of the caring role and less help for us over the holiday period so found myself in bed for much of Boxing Day (St. Stephen's Day to my Irish friends). Roch, Kate and Tom went to Griffin Park for the Brentford match. (Brentford drew to Brighton and Hove). Evening festivities recommenced when they got back and I once more rose to the occasion.

 Magnificent pudding provided as always by our Mauri

At Griffin Park

Christmas Day selfie!

I have resolved that next year I will have to let some things go and accept that I can't produce Christmas in all its perceived perfection unless we have a lot more help in terms of Care next year. I have got to admit that I cannot do it all - well, I can, with help from the kids, but then I collapse. I've come to realise that I carry on my own private Christmas charade each year. It's a world of make believe where I try to convince myself that if I can just reproduce our Maher Family Christmas...I can prove nothing much has changed for us. But it's an illusion. Everything has changed.
I made a promise to myself on Christmas morning when I woke up feeling more exhausted than I ever have before at Christmas: new family tradition will be Christmas Eve takeaway. So far, that's my only concession to MND but I suspect there will have to be more. It's a shame, because I love it all. I'm thinking the Christmas cookies have to stay...

Still, despite fatigue and the occasional tearful moment (many thanks to my wonderful children for all their help over Christmas and for providing the occasional shoulder), there were lots of happy moments together and new memories to treasure.

"It's a song!"