Happy New Year

We have had a family tradition for about the last 20 years (with the exception of 1999) of spending New Year's Eve at Celia's delightful cottage in the wilds of the Derbyshire Peak District. We would drive up on about the 29th or 30th, and see the New Year in with some leisurely walks, nice party food, good wine and a spectacular firework display. If it snowed (and it often did) we would have a lovely trudge over the fields to the pub and have a New Years Day drink in front of a roaring fire. If I was lucky we would be snowed in and I wouldn't be able to make it back to work. As Rosemarie's condition got worse we were more limited in what we could do but the event was still a permanent fixture on the calendar.

Last New Year was Rosemarie's last visit to Derbyshire. I have just been looking at the pictures. Heart-breaking. She could still walk (just) and we could still travel...

I had been thinking for a while about what to do this year. I knew that the Care Home was not going to keep the residents up to see the New Year in, and the two children have their own lives...and I wasn't exactly in a party mood. Celia offered to come down and spend New Year in London, but I thought about it and decided that I needed a break. Apart from a trip to Aldershot for a job interview I had not been out of London for a year. It had been the same routine week after week.

The evening of the day of the medication review I drove up to Derbyshire with mixed feelings. Guilt mostly. My son and daughter were taking turns visiting Rosemarie while I was away, but this was still the first New Year we had been apart since we met.

It turned out ok. Rosemarie seemed on good form, possibly because of the change in medication, and my son and daughter reported relaxed, warm visits with lots of laughter and kissing.

I didn't find the visit to Derbyshire as empty and haunted as I expected. There was enough snow and ice to prevent me driving the car up to the cottage, and fun times were had trying to reverse it round a corner on the afternoon of New Year's Eve, but the snow was gone by New Year's Day.

It wasn't traumatic but it wasn't as relaxing as I had hoped. I probably ate too much and drank too much, and I cannot say that I feel the new year brings hope. I am increasingly feeling a dark emptiness ahead. None of my pictures of my life included this. We were going to spend our later years in warm, loving partnership. Not wealthy maybe, but enough to do those things we never had time to do when work or the children occupied us. Now I look ahead and there is nothing.

I am used to the emptiness and meaninglessness of life (I paid a lot of money many years ago to learn that), and I know that it is my job to create the meaning.

I just don't seem to be able to summon up any interest in doing so.