My Own Christmas Memories (Part 6) http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~ajobebrown/jobe/letters_ch_cale_j_brewer.html CHRISTMAS - 1992-1998 During the mid 1990's, my husband finally had enough seniority to take his vacation at Christmas and we would go and spend it with my mother and step father. Daddy had died in January 1981, and my mother had remarried in 1982 a wonderful man, Claude Dodd. She had moved from Grand Prairie and was living in east Fort Worth, in what used to be Handley. My daughter had married in 1994 and she would spend Christmas at his parents. The first couple of years my mother would make all the fixings. Later on the main course would be ordered from Winn Dixie, which was only a block away. Every Christmas eve, we would go to Brahms for those delicious hamburgers. It was Christmas in 1992 that we realized that these 'good times' were coming to a quick end. It was at this time that we realized that my stepfather would soon have to be committed to a nursing home. He was 12 years older than my mother and had Parkinson's. His health was failing rapidly. This Christmas Eve, for the 3rd time in one week, we were sitting in an emergency room waiting for him to get stitches, having fallen again. We got him a walker but he refused to use it or even a cane. The next year, Christmas 1993, my mother was still living in Ft Worth at Claude's house, but Claude had been placed in a nursing home the previous summer. At least the nursing home was close by. On Christmas Day, we ordered from Winn Dixie again and made the trimmings at home. My husband drove to Weatherford and picked up Aunt Annie, Daddy's widowed sister who lived alone. and had no children. Auntie's daughter, Lois, who had lived with her was now in a nursing home herself. Allan couldn't stand her being by herself. The next year, Aunt Annie would be in a nursing home herself. Mommy had bought Claude 2 nice outfits for Christmas. When we took them to the nursing home to give to Claud, he didn't know us or even Mommy. It was such an awful feeling that day. However, the next day, we returned to the nursing home to visit and Claud was sitting in a wheelchair in the hall and was all dressed in one of his new outfits. When we came in, he immediately started waving, smiling and laughing and knew all of us. What a change from the day before. However, that night the phone rang and this wonderful man had died. So on December 29th, we had his funeral and then on December 31st, New Year's Eve, we quickly moved my mother from Claude's house in Ft Worth to the old house where I had grew up from 1963-1970. That was some week between Christmas and New Years. The next few Christmases, 1994-1997, would be spent in Grand Prairie, Texas, in the house where I had spent my teen years. I had started back doing genealogy and between Christmas 1997 and New Years 1998, I got my first computer. It was a librarian in Arlington who actually convinced me that I didn't have to the live in the states to work on the hobby which I loved. In mid January 1998, Allan would have to go in the hospital and would spend 3 weeks in the hospital and eventually have bypass surgery, an aorta valve replaced and an aneurysm removed. For the next while, Christmas would be spent at home.