Welcome to Andieland ---- The mind is like a parachute, for it to work it must first be open.

   Well, here it is that time of year again. The time I start stressing about money and lack of time and sleep. What a lot of you don't know is that my family falls apart this time of year as well. My mother has never been mentally stable and has taken medication as long as I can remember, when I was young she blamed her seasonal depression on the fact that she was so far away from her side of our family ( we lived in NY and NJ, she's from SC ). When we moved her it was because my uncle had died and my grandmother, her mother had died on Christmas day the year my parents moved here. My mother never handled that well but seemed to do fine after some time. When I had her grand-daughter she was great but shortly after that my father was diagnosed with cancer and died the day before his birthday, a week before Thanksgiving, seven years ago this year. She still hasn't recovered from this.

   Now some background info on my mother's side of the family: she has 3 brother and 3 sisters and they all have large families with grand kids and great grandkids, I have cousins everywhere. Most of them drink and smoke. A lot of them are dead because of it and just recently, MY uncle's wife shot herself and died of complications from surgery ( we think it was to escape debt)  She was almost 75 years old.

  A few days ago my mother called me and said that he younger sister was referred to hospice. In short the doctors have exhausted all possibilities and she is terminal. 4 weeks before Christmas once again my family will be mourning. I'm not sure how much more my mother can take but I have been fearfull lately and I can't shake this feeling.