Thankfully, Christmas is over

Phew! its over! Christmas I mean. And I wonder how many of you out there share that view?
Christmas, that period of the year of enforced joviality, the time of high unexpressed emotions that all too frequently turn into high expressed emotions! This unfortunately was the case in the Woolley house this year thank to my mother.
My mother, due I think to her Ego & Super Ego defence mechanisms bring diminished 'thanks' to her 84years has recently been most unpleasant in her (formerly held in check to some degree) manipulative  but sad  not her lies. Her Narcissistic personality disorder has in short come to the fore.
For many years we have noticed that she has lied and displayed some unpleasant behaviour in her relationships within the family, but tended to dismiss it has eccentric but over Christmas her behaviour & lies reached a crescendo & couldn't be tolerated any longer.
She came to use on Christmas Eve. Had supper & then we drove her to Midnight Mass. Returning home, we had a glass of wine, put a hot water bottle in her bed & we all retired (not all to her bed I must add!) Christmas day we all ate a cooked 'Ulster Fry' breakfast  (thank you Kate), went to the local pub for a snifter, returning home after 1 hr or.so. We then all opened our presents t when Chris & his partner Rebecca came round for lunch. The rest of the day was spent relaxing by the stove.
All went to bed comfortable at around 10pm. The following day saw us cook breakfast for mom before me driving her the 8miles to my brothers for the the day.
That's when the shit hit the fan! She told my brother & his in laws that she had been sent to her room, told not to come down  whilst we had a riotous party downstairs! I wish!
My brother & his wife told me this story independently, we challenged mom who... denied it initially, then said that my brother tells lies, then she said that she said it fir a joke! Now she's asking for "forgiveness" (he word) At times she changes her story & says that she "doesn't remember saying anything, then says that my brother "shouldn't tell tales..."
Her latest caper has upset the whole family, they reflect & thought that they had given her a nice family Christmas but...apparently not.
This is that latest in a life time of capers that mom has pulled over the years,& sadly, a picture is beginning to emerge to my (formerly estranged) brother and me of what our mother was/is really like.
The good thing about this is that now my brother & me have become closer. We have met up twice now in the last month-more than in the precious 10years!
I forgive my mom. I find it difficult to to forget. Perhaps because I'm still trying to digest the incidents of the past involving her,my dad, brother & me. I do know that my responses to her henceforth will be more
 measured, almost clinical in there nature.
And you know....You can chose your friends, but you can't chose your family.