Christmas will be very different this year.  My mother passed away at the beginning of this month.  She struggled for almost 20 years with various forms of cancer, neurodegenerative nerve disease, complications from her cancer treatments, and an increasing host of health difficulties that by themselves would be considered challenging for a patient and family.  As her oncologist frequently noted, the cancer had difficulty with my mom.  She was a force to reckoned with to anyone at any time.

Even when she became severely ill, she did not go gently into the night.  Mom was a being of passion for others.  She fought everyone and everything if she felt it needed to happen.  With no regard of how it would destroy herself, she constantly stood up for what she felt was right.  It took many, many years to teach her to have even an ounce of reluctance to speak her mind.  At the end, she was more circumspect, but no less full of fire.