Another Disappointing Christmas

It's been so many years since I loved Christmas.....I guess when you aren't a child, or no long have a long child something in the excitement gets lost. This year, like so many before it was a huge disappointment. It actually started weeks ago. A sister-in-law decided she no longer wanted to exchange gifts. This is someone whose income is multiple times what mine is and gets everything she wants all year long. She no longer felt she wanted to buy us gifts or receive things that she didn't want. She told me that she was going to do this with the entire family and not attend my brother's Christmas Eve family gathering and gift exchange. After she told me that she said "Is that okay with you?" How do you answer something like that, if you say that it's not okay and you want to exchange you are trying to make her do something she doesn't want to. Besides she said she wasn't going to my brothers so I didn't think it would be so bad. About a week later she informed my sister of the same thing. That night she was at my brother's and guess what? She didn't tell them she wasn't exchanging gifts and she had a nice pile of gifts for them. When we arrived she had made sure she arrived early and was in the kitchen away from the others when they arrived. I was really hurt and felt mislead. While this may seem trite please remember this is a year where my father died, where I was hospitalized four times, had the heart surgery and received the news that my condition was not curable. NOT a good year to put it mildly. I tried to focus on the my loving sister-in-law who was the hostess. I cried when I got home for hours but then tried to let it go. I knew Christmas Day they would not be at my mother's. I arrived at my mother's (with a seven pound hot ham and casserole dish of sweet potatoes) and they were no where near ready to eat. My mother is very disorganized and nothing in her kitchen is in the same location twice. We never could locate the turkey lifters and my sister struggled to get a twenty pound turkey out of the oven with a fork and pancake turner. Needless to say, it fell apart. We sat down to dinner and things didn't taste right or well to me. I was freezing as well. After dinner my sister and I were sitting in the living room talking. The back door into the family room/kitchen area opened and I heard someone coughing their head off. They sounded very ill and I realized it was my sister-in-law bringing over my mother's gifts. I felt anxious as her coughing sounded like bronchitis or worse. Around that time my brother started a fire in the wood stove and a horrible smelling smoke filled the downstairs. At that point I knew I had to leave. Rob had run home to feed the animals dinner and I called him and told him to get right back and pick me up. He found me waiting outside wrapped in a blanket. When I grabbed my purse from the room the cougher was in she said something like "Where are you going?" I answered "No where near you." She then snapped to my brother "We're leaving." How thoughtful after contaminating my eighty year old mother and her home with her germs and filling her house with smoke, they were ready to leave. When I got home I was so cold I shook for hours. As the night progressed I felt worse and during the night I began vommitting. I will not be planning to go to my mother's house again. She knows where I live and can come here. My sister feels I am not up to entertaining here but trust me, it's a lot better than what happened to me yesterday. My stomach is touchy today but not like last night. Next year I want to skip it altogether.