A Different Christmas

How do you deal with addicted family members at the holidays? Learn how this mother and daughter set boundaries.

- Joanna Shoemaker

Thanksgiving was over. Time to start thinking about Christmas. Yet I couldn’t get last Christmas out of my mind. As always, we’d spent Christmas Eve at Mom’s house. She’d decorated with fresh pine boughs and loaded her table with bacon-wrapped chicken, her special cheeseball and a ham studded with pineapple slices.

She was also miserable the whole evening. She stood with her back against the kitchen sink, chain-smoking and biting her lower lip, her face creased with worry and regret, looking every one of her 74 years. She’d lost weight since the last time I saw her. Her blue eyes avoided everyone’s gaze.

“Have you heard from Michael and Melissa yet?” she finally asked.

I shook my head. My two younger siblings, who’d struggled for years with drug addiction, were late. Like most other Christmas Eves. Sometimes they didn’t show up at all. Or they arrived high. Or in withdrawal. Or needing money. Picking a fight.

“Well,” Mom said, reciting an oft-repeated line, “I guess this Christmas will be ruined like all the others.”

Mom would have been justified feeling as if addiction had ruined her entire life. My daddy was an alcoholic who had affairs and left Mom—twice. They divorced, remarried and divorced again. Through it all, they fought over his drinking. After he was gone, Mom worked herself to the bone supporting Michael, Melissa and me. She felt whiplashed and demeaned.

Michael and Melissa were just 11 and 7 when Daddy left for good—I was 14. The trauma of it all sent them down a hard road. They fell in with friends who introduced them to drugs. They cycled through jobs and rehab programs. Struggled in their marriages. Disappeared for stretches. Patterns set by our own father.