Merry Christmas?

Christmas has always been my favorite time of year. The decorating, present buying, cooking, baking and good cheer. Everyone is happy during the holidays. A time for frenzy that eventually turns into fun.
But this year was different:
The teenager was not feeling well, annoyed and nasty, the boyfriend was sick and the grandmother was tolerating the two.
It was going to be a lean Christmas, we all knew this. We all accepted our gift of being together, for better or worse.
Little did we know, it could actually get worse.
At 5:30 a.m. Christmas morning, I in my sweatpants, crawled into bed with the most beautiful daughter in the world. She snuggled briefly and fell back asleep. Moments later as I leaped from the bed and ran to the bathroom, my hopes of rejuvenating Christmas went down the toilet. There the ribs I had coveted for many years, the corn bread and the vegetables from Christmas Eve's dinner poured from my mouth in a constant rush and splash, splash, splash.
It had begun.
The stomach flu everyone was talking about. The one written up in the newspaper. How did I get this? Where did it come from?
I laid back in bed and felt the rush at another end and had to eliminate the prospects of eating anything on Christmas day.
As my daughter awoke and discovered her mother was ill, she text messaged her cousin saying she wasn't coming. She angrily yelled she wanted out of the house.
Unable to drive, the boyfriend, even tho not feeling well himself, took her to the place she wanted to be.
Meanwhile, a houseful of people were preparing to enter for Christmas family celebrations and food. As I talked the grandmother and boyfriend through the final preparations, I knew I would be barred from any social interactions that day.
Hours upon hours the visits to the porcelain god continued. Each sip of ginger ale left my body as quickly as it had entered.
In the other room I heard the eating, the laughing, the opening of presents, the thank yous and talking.
But I lie in my bed, quiet as a mouse.
Their meal was completed, the presents were opened, the visiting ceased. All was quiet.
The dishes were cleaned up, the food put away and everyone went to bed.
When the clock struck 12, it began again. The boyfriend ran down the stairs and relinquished his dinner. Over and over he suffered the same fate - wanting to die as I had done 12 hour before.
As the grandmother stood and shook her head, she knew the illness was one she would dread. For later that night, she felt the rumblings too and sat on the toilet and lost her cookies down the flue.
And there I was finally feeling better, with one in the kitchen and the other in the bathroom losing their fluids in dreadful fashion.
The phone call came and the boyfriend's sister was ill. She too had breathed in the beast.
Yes it was the holidays and all were sick.
Next year the Grinch-like disease will miss the family who tried so hard to have a Merry Christmas, for some of us will be on a beach sunning and forgetting that day.