As Christmas quickly approaches I’ve found myself with one last gift to purchase.

My mother’s.

What do you buy for someone who’s dying? It seems even more finite and wrongly prophetic to not purchase anything… But what do you get them?

A couple of years ago Tracy Clark-Flory over at the news blog Salon wrote in detail about her father going through his last Christmas with his wife who was dying of lung cancer.
Here’s a excerpt from the piece.

When your partner is dying, the idea of a shiny new Lexus as a symbol of commitment—to anything other than monthly payments—becomes particularly odious; “diamonds are forever” takes on depressing new meaning (because life isn’t forever). No, love isn’t “a car in the driveway with a big bow on top.” It’s pushing a wheelchair. It’s cutting off all of your lover’s hair as it begins to fall out in large clumps during chemo, and massaging that patchy head to give her one of the few physical pleasures left to her. It’s laughing while browsing a wig shop where the only other customer is a transvestite prostitute. It’s relearning how to cook after three decades of marriage. It’s giving shots through a layer of belly fat. It’s sitting side-by-side in a hospital bed watching TV.

It’s a truly thoughtful perspective on the true meaning of Christmas for those dealing with a terminal disease.