Yeah...that sounds like the worst way to spend a Christmas. NDad is the one with all of the Christmas hospital visits/health crises, but only because he and my GCBrother, who lives with him, always let his health decline long before the holidays and it always reaches critical mass usually on Christmas Eve. When my NMom was still alive, I'd drive 11 hours one way to come home for Christmas--hubby typically only got 3 days off, so we had almost a full day of travel, Christmas day, then another full day of travel back. NMom would yell at me for having an hour long dinner w/ my bff from high school I never saw and for spending 50% of the rest of my time with my in-laws, accusing them of "stealing you away" (I didn't have to clean their house and do all of the cooking after that long drive and they were nice to me, I wanted to be stolen).

The little time we had together (this was my only visit through the year) was spent in my NMom's room as she held court (she'd like to sit on her bed, watching QVC in the background, while you stood in the small space around her bed. Rarely would she go in the living room where you had a place to sit.). Every Christmas visit was spent with her crying her crocodile tears while she over-emoted over some person she hated or barely knew's health troubles, going into vivid detail about the health issues, which told me she enjoyed the topic, and going on about "Isn't that just so sad? Isn't that just SO sad?" and I'd respond "I don't know them, you don't even like them, so what's sad is I drove 11 hours for this." Then she'd pout and tell me at least she's not heartless like me. Yup. Good talk, Ma.