I went home for dinner today and before we ate, I lay in bed with my Mum. I found a little card I'd given her in 1999 that had dropped out of her Bible. We held hands and talked. About the busy day she had entertaining an unresponsive guest who turned out to not know how to speak English. The conversation turned to how I've been feeling like a grinch this Christmas. And she laughed and said she felt happy because she knows she's had such a good life - winning a scholarship to study abroad for 9 months, meeting people from all over the world. Sure she's had some hard knocks, but she accepts what she has lost, and is happy with what she now has. She knows there are others who are worse off - like this family she read about in the news who survives on only $450 a month. I was so humbled by her words. But then she grew quiet and told me she can't even have a conversation with my dad anymore. She tried to, today, recognising that she hasn't been very nice to him through the year, and instead he got snappish and lost his temper. It must be such great sorrow to live in a house with a man you used to love, but who has now become a stranger. I wonder if she's tormented by guilt like I am. And holding her hand, which has become much thinner, I told her that my dad would have appreciated it if he knew what she was trying to do. I feel so sad to think about what we've been through in the last few years. But I also feel so blessed that she is my mother; I am the luckiest girl in the whole wide world.