In early 2019 I wrote this, a reflection on dementia, and on our experience of caring for my mother-in-law as the disease gradually took from her everything that made her her. Everyone I know seems either to have or to have had a parent (at least one) with dementia – it is so terrifyingly common that it starts to seem inevitable. And now my father is in a nursing home with the same condition.

He made it to 94 before diagnosis. Initially it had seemed that whilst his memory was deteriorating, his cognitive abilities were not impaired. And we had attributed some of his confusion to his sight loss – he had macular degeneration which by that time had taken all but a bit of peripheral vision. But there we were – he announced the diagnosis confidently, and without any evident distress. Things moved fairly rapidly – I have read since that (a) the later the diagnosis the faster the progress of the disease, which makes sense, and (b) that those who fend it off by keeping mentally active, by learning new stuff, challenging their brains, when they do succumb, find that dementia takes hold fast. It also seems to us that the pandemic, as it closed down so many social opportunities for him, just at the point when he could no longer use his computer to keep in touch, due to his sight loss, may have triggered a decline. And that the death of his youngest son to cancer in 2020, and the sudden death of my husband in 2021 may also have contributed – he had become accustomed to losing friends and relatives of his own generation, but these were shocking losses.

My sister, who lived with him before sight loss and dementia, took care of his practical needs, but these ramped up, and in the course of 2023 we realised that it was no longer possible for him to be kept safe at home (going ‘for a walk around the village’, making himself a coffee, getting himself into his armchair – all hazardous due to sight loss, lack of spatial awareness and general confusion). And as his dependency increased, so did his occasional bursts of anger at being manhandled and managed. This was verbal rather than physical aggression, but no less distressing when it was coming from one’s Dad. He no longer recognised the house where he had lived for 18 years, asking where his bedroom was, and when he would be returning home. He no longer reliably recognised me as his daughter, asking me about my family, and where I had lived, and found it difficult to accept my assurances of who I was, let alone to hold on to that information for more than moments.

As the dementia progressed, I was editing his memoirs. He’d started the process years before, but by the time we started to try to stitch the different sections (written or dictated via voice recognition software) together, we realised we were up against it, as his memory was becoming less and less reliable. Some later sections had to be discarded, or heavily edited after consultation between us to try to determine what had happened, when, or in what order. The process was frustrating, given that we could no longer check with him about details of his life before our own arrivals, and tricky, given that we wanted it to be very clearly his voice, but some rigorous editing and rewording was nonetheless necessary. Thankfully, we were able to put a copy into his hands whilst he was still able to recognise that this was The Book which had been his project and purpose for such a long time.

But now that the book is done, it means more to me than I’d expected. It is the record of a life well lived, a life of service and of leadership, of travel and adventure. And it’s the voice of a man who was always ready to take on challenges, to chair committees, to lead projects, and who was often asked to do so, a man who made bold decisions (to go into the aircraft industry rather than his father’s choice of the civil service, to then leave that industry because of his pacifist convictions, to move into education, and then to relocate his family to West Africa…). We still hear that voice occasionally – sometimes when we visit he is in conference mode, and asks us whether we’re booked in for the keynote talk, and whether we’ve got accommodation sorted out, or believes himself to be present in the home in some professional capacity. No wonder he resists sometimes when told to use his zimmer frame, or when carers want to shower or dress him. There’s no alternative – the mismatch between who he, some of the time, believes he is, and what he is actually able to do now is irreconcilable. But in his memoir he is still present.

Wendy Mitchell, whose books and blogs about her early onset dementia have given fascinating insight into the condition, decided that she was not willing to go on beyond the point when she was no longer Wendy, not willing to reach the point when she might not recognise her daughters, the point when dementia had stripped away everything that brought her joy. No one reading her books – and in particular her last book, One Last Thing, a passionate argument for assisted dying, and for provision to be made for people with dementia to have that choice too – could doubt that she had the capacity to make that decision and to take the necessary steps. Her final blog entry, posted after her death, explains, with her usual honesty, clarity and courage – and even humour – why and how she did so.

“If assisted dying was available in this country, I would have chosen it in a heartbeat, but it isn’t. I didn’t want dementia to take me into the later stages; that stage where I’m reliant on others for my daily needs; others deciding for me when I shower or maybe insisting I had a bath, which I hate; or when and what I eat and drink. Or what they believe to be ‘entertainment’. Yes, I may be happy but that’s irrelevant. The Wendy that was didn’t want to be the Wendy dementia will dictate for me. I wouldn’t want my daughters to see the Wendy I’d become either.”

https://whichmeamitoday.wordpress.com/blog/

That paragraph resonated so much with me. I remember my mother-in-law, who in general raged less than Dad about the indignities of her life, stubbornly removing her feeding tube whilst she was recovering from bronchitis, trying (and sometimes succeeding) in removing her neck brace after a fall, and saying to us, ‘oh, just put me in the bin’. Dad, until recently, was determined to live to be 100. These days he does not know how old he is – we think he sees himself as a much younger man, one reason why he cannot recognise us as his children – and I don’t think he would understand the question if we asked him whether he wanted to go on. Neither of them had or have the capacity to go through that rigorous thought process – not just whether, but when and how – and then carry it out. So the most we can hope for whilst Dad lives is that he is, as his care home notes often put it, ‘on average, content’. We know the trajectory of this disease is relentlessly downward, and all we can do is to work with his carers to ensure that he is as safe as possible, as comfortable as possible, as content as possible.

I don’t see any solution to this. I strongly support assisted dying legislation – it should not be beyond any sophisticated legislative system to put in place sufficient safeguards to ensure that no one is coerced or cajoled into ending their life earlier than they would wish – but I cannot see any way of that helping dementia patients. And so, as Wendy Mitchell says, it can’t be a case of assisted dying OR gold standard palliative care. Both are needed, so that people who would not be willing to choose the first option can be cared for such that their last years/months/days/hours are as peaceful, as pain-free, as possible, and so that people who lose the capacity to choose are kept safe, as content as possible, with as much dignity as possible. And that means carers and family working together.

When we read in those care notes that Dad has been raging – hurting himself and his carers, hitting out, shouting – it distresses us, of course. The care home staff take it in their stride (‘bless him’, they say as they recount the latest incident). They have a repertoire of things to try – bring in a new face, try to distract – but with the prime aim to prevent harm (to him or to them). Medication is part of this repertoire, and whilst the image of care home residents being doped into placidity is deeply troubling, the impression we have is that when the medication is working Dad can be more himself, not at the mercy of his frustration and anger, his distress eased, at least for a while so that he can enjoy his food, and chatting to the carers or to visitors.

I thought the other day of Dylan Thomas’s most famous poem, ‘Do Not Go Gentle’. I’ve always thought that the dying of the light is death, and the raging is heroic, courage in the face of the inevitable. But as I get older, my feelings about that have changed. To rage against the very idea of mortality is irrational but at the same time profoundly human – death makes no sense, that someone can be totally there and then in a moment totally, irrevocably not there. And we so often use the language of war when talking about terminal illness – so and so died ‘after a long battle with cancer’. To fight to hang on to life for as long as possible, to be with the people we love for as long as possible is, again, profoundly human. But it is also human to seek the most peaceful path, to, as a friend with terminal cancer once put it, negotiate with mortality, in order that the time remaining can be spent as richly as possible, without expending all of one’s energy in a battle against an unbeatable enemy. She found ways to enjoy those last months of life, spending as much time as possible in the countryside she loved and with the people she loved, refusing to waste that precious time on things that brought her no joy, or brought her additional pain. That isn’t always possible, but I found her approach inspiring.

Dementia is a kind of long, drawn out death, as the person is engulfed and extinguished, not all at once but little by little. Wendy Mitchell talked of ‘playing games with this adversary of mine to try and stay one step ahead’, and she did this for as long as she could, making her decision when she realised that it would soon be impossible, and taking that one last step before the disease could take it for her. For Dad, the time for attempting to outwit his dementia is long gone, and he is effectively at its mercy. There’s nothing for him to fight, and the more he fights the more he loses.

Reading the poem again now, I think of Dad’s raging, against the loss of dignity, the loss of control over where he is and what happens to him, against the loss – even if he can no longer articulate it – of the things that made him him, against the slow dying of the light. Even into his nineties, and even after his diagnosis, he talked about his ‘purpose’, questioning what it was now, how he could rediscover it. We felt, though it would not have helped to say, and he would never have accepted, that his purpose now could surely be to rest from all that striving, from leading, from driving forward. That’s gone now, except for an occasional echo in one of his circular monologues, but its loss is part of what he is so viscerally resisting.

We understand his rage, we really do. Ah, but we cannot truly wish for his last months or years to be spent burning and raving at close of day. Please, Dad, go gentle.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(Dylan Thomas, 1947)

Lissa Evans’ lovely novel, Spencer’s List, talks about how grief moves into a different phase one year and a day after the death. That until that point, every day one thinks, ‘this time last year’, and recalls a world in which that person is there, in which one can reach out and speak to them, hear their voice, hold their hand. And one year and one day later, ‘this time last year’ recalls a world that they have already left. It doesn’t mean it gets easier – that realisation in itself is painful – but it is different. And it goes on becoming different, as we are different, each time we lose someone close.

https://cathannabel.blog/2020/05/29/some-fantastic-place-2/

A couple of years back when I wrote the above, I was talking about the loss of my mother and my youngest brother. I had no idea then what I would soon face, or how it would affect me. But there’s truth in that idea, that one year and one day is a staging post in the weird, convoluted journey of grief.

It’s not only that you’ve accumulated a whole year of memories of the world without them in it. You have got through the practical stuff, by and large – you’ve dealt with the bereavement admin, maybe tidied their clothes away or donated things to charity shops, figured out how to do the stuff around the house that they always dealt with (or figured out who to ask for help). You’ve got through the ‘firsts’ – first birthday, first Father’s Day, first Christmas, first wedding anniversary without them, and the new anniversaries, of the day they died, of the funeral.

And then you realise, this is it now. Which is why, I think, many people have said that the second year is tougher than the first.

During that first year, it often felt a bit as if I was part of an experiment in solo living. A friend, Molly Bell, in her warm and insightful book on living alone after her husband died, likens it to ‘those TV series, where a willing group of people are made to live as though they existed at a different point in history … for a year, perhaps, … before returning to life as it was before’. But there is no returning.

The things I’ve learned to do for the first time on my own now seem normal. Cooking a meal for one and eating it alone now seems normal. Going to sleep and waking up on my own, coming home after an evening out to an empty house, deciding on my own what and when to eat, what to watch or listen to – all normal. (Which doesn’t mean I don’t have moments when it seems ridiculous, impossible, that I’m on my own, when I still think, even after all this time, where the heck has he got to?)

Some of this is kind of OK. I can do the cooking and eating alone thing, as long as every now and again I have a meal out with friends or family, or I can cook a meal for them. It’s OK, but it’s harder to find the motivation to tackle a meal with a lot of ingredients and a lot of prep time, when it’s just for me. I go to concerts on my own, if friends aren’t free to go with me, and it’s OK. I go for walks on my own, although I am much more cautious about going off-road, if there isn’t someone with me whose arm I can grab if I wobble, and just because I generally feel more vulnerable.

Other things are much less OK. It’s quite possible to go for days without speaking out loud (other than when doing my Duolingo sessions), or hearing another person’s voice (other than via the TV or radio) in the room. It’s quite possible to go for days without laughing out loud. We were always talking – mostly nonsense, trivia or simple practical discussions, but also about what we were reading, what was going on in the news, what was going on in the lives of the people we loved. And we did laugh together, a lot. It feels odd to laugh at something when I’m sitting on my own.

I spend as much time as I can with family and friends, but at the end of the meal or the cinema trip I come home to an empty house. I am used to it – though there are odd times when it hits me all over again as if it was the first time – but I don’t suppose I will ever like it. I think it’s the starkness of the contrasts that makes it hardest, between being with other people and being completely alone. For over 44 years I was only alone at home for a few hours in a day, if that. The norm was that companionable presence, no need to talk, but he was there, and either of us could share our thoughts with the other whenever we wished. And so when I’ve been out, or the house has been full of voices and laughter, and then it’s just me and there’s silence, that abrupt, brutal contrast sometimes lays me very low. And so no matter how many more outings or visits I arrange, how much of my time I spend with other people, at home or away, at the end of that I will still feel that aloneness.

Loneliness is now normal. Sadness is normal too. It’s not a mood so much as a presence. I’m not talking about being wracked with grief, though that happens sometimes too – just about that sense of having lost, of being less, of an absence that will still be palpable in every room in the house, in every activity outside the house, whatever I do.

Those things can’t be fixed. I’m not asking anyone to suggest how I could fix them, or asking anyone to do more than they’re already doing to support me. I have to work through this process – and writing about it is part of how I do that – and believe that I will over time get a better balance, feel less bleak less often.

My experience of widowhood is, obviously, very much mine, and will not follow the same pattern as anyone else’s (if any of us are following any discernible pattern). The ‘one year’ thing is very different if the year leading up to the loss of your person was spent watching them weaken, anticipating their loss, nursing them, trying to support your children through that gradual bereavement in advance. My year up to 9 October was entirely, utterly normal. With hindsight there are events – occasions when we spent time with family or friends, for the first time since Covid – that have gained significance because they were both the first and the last time, but then, they were just lovely occasions, that we expected would and could be repeated in the years to come.

Whatever differences there are in the way we – widows – lost our person, what we share is that the person we lost is the one with whom our lives were inextricably entwined, so that there is nothing that has nothing to do with them. So the loss is inescapable. Because we share that, we can help each other. I’ve found immense comfort and strength in talking to other widows (in person or online) – not that they have answers for me, but to have someone say, yes, I know, I know what that’s like, I feel it too, and to understand that isn’t an imaginative leap on their part, but real, deep, lived knowledge.

So what has helped me through this year and a bit? Obviously, love. The love of my children, as we support each other. The love of my family and friends, which has been steadfast and sustaining. Letting myself feel what I feel – not berating myself for having weepy days, not feeling bad for not weeping as much as I ‘should’. Being practical – getting things done, getting things fixed, making plans, reminding myself that I have a future, even if it’s not the one I envisaged. Enjoying – on my own or with other people – things we used to enjoy together: music, films, TV, books, the view from our windows, local walks, good food and wine. Talking about him, reminiscing about him, never shutting him out of the life I have now. Being sentimental – the yellow roses to remind me of our wedding day, the patchwork cushions made from his old shirts, the playlist I made for the wake, wearing his old dressing gown, dedicating a track to him on Jazz Record Requests.

There is no road map, no itinerary, no timetable for any of this. I can be fine, and then ambushed by grief. I can be strong and practical and able to cope, and then whimpering in a corner because the central heating thermostat needs new batteries. I can be adventurous and bold and then want to just be here, in our home, with the familiar things that we shared around me.

And so I go on into that difficult second year, trying to be kind to myself, holding on to the many, many good things in my life, holding on to the people who’ve got me through this far. Allons-y.

How can I even begin to write about this year? As it began, we were still grieving the loss of my younger brother in 2020, still in lockdown, still despairing over the state of our present government, still unable to think very far ahead or make firm plans. The world continued on its headlong rush to hell in a handcart. I blogged only occasionally, about Passing Time, and for Holocaust Memorial Day, and about my reading during the year (all my writing energy was going into the PhD). All the usual sort of things happened, and some less usual ones – I had a fall, which reduced my mobility significantly for the rest of the year, we went to a family wedding, our son moved into his new house, I submitted the PhD, to general rejoicing.

And then, on 9 October, a week after I’d submitted the thesis, I woke in the early hours to realise that my husband was having a cardiac arrest, and in the blur and muddle of a sudden awakening to realise that I was losing him. The paramedics did everything there was to be done, and kept on doing it until they knew there was nothing more that could be done. Our kids were summoned and arrived, and we sat, shell-shocked, trying to understand what had happened. In the space of an hour our world had utterly changed, for ever.

Since that day, everything I’ve done, everything I’ve written, everything I’ve watched or listened to, has been about that loss. The mountain of bereavement admin, of course, and the planning of the funeral. The decisions about how to manage here on my own, especially as I’m not very mobile at present. Every conversation, even when we’re not explicitly talking about ‘it’. I was determined to do my usual summaries of what I’ve read and what I’ve watched during the year, but I had to acknowledge and address the huge gulf between Before and After. And I still find I cannot listen to music in the focused way we used to.

It’s too early for me to have any profound reflections on grief. I’m just at the beginning of that journey. I’ve encountered it before, of course – the loss of my mother 26 years ago, the loss of my mother-in-law gradually to dementia and then finally to a stroke three Christmases ago, the loss of my younger brother to cancer in 2020. The difference here is that, as much as all of them were loved, however important they were to me, none of them was woven into the fabric of my daily life. And so I could go for hours, even days, feeling normal until I bumped into something or was ambushed by something that brought it back. Nothing is normal for me now and yet everything around me is familiar.

I know that the old Kubler-Ross ‘stages of grief’ hypothesis has been re-thought, to describe ‘states’ rather than stages, getting away from any notion of a linear process. If I have learned anything about grieving it is that it is not linear. The description of the five states also clearly encompasses a wide range of situations, including coming to terms with one’s own illness and mortality, and other life crises, and some of them seem alien to at least my experience of bereavement.

I have not in any of my grieving so far felt anger. Perhaps, as I do not believe in God, I have nothing/no one to rail and rage against, and the people I’ve lost have been lost to illnesses that, however cruel and brutal, are common, rather than to tragedies with a human cause. I haven’t ever asked, why him? why her? why me? The question makes no sense. Why? Because cancer invaded their body, because their heart had a genetic weakness, because dementia took away not only cognitive but other physical functions too. The same goes for bargaining: who would I be bargaining with, and for what? The people I’ve loved and lost aren’t coming back, however virtuous my life from this point on.

Denial? Only in the sense that in those early hours, as we prepared to make phone calls, we all had this sense of unreality, that we were perhaps about to waken family members and close friends with bad news that we had somehow hallucinated. But we knew. We knew there was no alternative reality to cling to, that the sense of unreality was a product of shock at something utterly unexpected, and of the only possible human response to death, that it makes no sense.

It makes no more sense now, over two months later, than it did in those awful first hours. How can a person be there, fully there, and then not, and so completely not that their absence from their own body is unmistakable and irrevocable? There’s an episode of Buffy that I will never, I suspect, be able to watch again, which confronts this, using a non-human to express what we all feel but don’t usually say:

I don’t understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she’s – There’s just a body, and I don’t understand why she just can’t get back in it and not be dead anymore. It’s stupid. It’s mortal and stupid. And – and Xander’s crying and not talking, and – and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch ever, and she’ll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why. (‘The Body’, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 5)

Faced with this incomprehensible reality, it is little wonder that human beings feel the need to believe in something after life, whether it is heaven, or reincarnation. Unfortunately those ideas seem as incomprehensible to me as death does. What lives on, I believe, is not the person, in some other sphere or inhabiting some other form, it is the memory of the person, the shape of them in the lives that they’ve left behind, the echo of their voice, the physical objects that they touched, the music that they loved. I do like this, however, which our son quoted in his tribute to his father at the funeral:

Picture a wave in the ocean. You can see it, measure it – its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through – and it’s there, and you can see it, and you know what it is: it’s a wave. And then it crashes on the shore and it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while. That’s one conception of death for a Buddhist: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from, where it’s supposed to be.

Michael Schur, The Good Place

I was very moved by the way death was shown in The Good Place, the origin of this quote, a comedy about what happens after you die. Various versions of heaven and hell (the Good Place, the Bad Place) are encountered, but in the end, our protagonists choose, instead of going on forever, to become part of the ocean, part of the universe. And I can find more comfort in the idea that the people I have loved and lost are part of the ocean now than in the idea that they exist in some other plane, where I could theoretically be reunited with them in due course.

I know that this process of grieving will be lifelong. Each loss has altered me, and this one most profoundly. There is nothing in my life that is the same as it was on 8 October. And so I have to learn how to be myself, how to order my life, how to enjoy the things we used to share. It’s not that he defined me, rather that our partnership helped me to figure out who I am, to define myself.

I’ve learned some things so far.

I need to accept offers of help, whether I could manage without them or not, where they are prompted by the desire to support me and be useful. If I turn that away, I am in some way rejecting that person’s love. I’d rather swallow my stubborn independence in some small measure and say yes, thank you. And I need to ask for help clearly and directly when I really do need it. That’s not easy but it’s going to be vital.

Life is short, and one may get no notice that it’s about to end. After he died, we found so many things bought for him with love, that he was delighted to get, but so delighted that he saved them ‘for special’. That ‘special’ bottle of wine or whisky was untouched, the new rucksack still had its labels on, the book’s pages had not been opened, the cellophane was still on the CD or DVD. That’s not going to be the way I live, not now. If I have something lovely, especially something lovely that someone has given me, I will use and enjoy it now. Now may be the special time, for all we know.

The kindness of strangers has helped me more than I could have imagined. I have been overwhelmed with messages from my friends and family, and their support has been what has kept us from going under in these last two months. Practical and emotional support. Hugs and flowers and scones and lasagne and shared tears. But since I spoke about this on social media, I’ve also had support from people I’ve never met in real life. People may hesitate before expressing sympathy with someone they only know from a few tweets, because they fear intruding, or because they don’t feel they can express themselves articulately enough. The thing is, I’ve been public about what’s happened, so an expression of sympathy and support is not an intrusion. And I don’t expect anyone to have anything mind-blowingly profound to say – clichés have their place, in allowing us to reach out to someone we don’t know. And all of the ‘you’re in my thoughts’, ‘I’m so sorry’, ‘sending love’, and just ‘Oh, Cath’ have comforted and strengthened me, made me feel less alone. So, if you feel moved by someone’s situation, tell them. (Please, though, don’t give advice unless asked for, and don’t tell them they’ll feel better soon, and don’t say that everything happens for a reason…)

This is going to be a long haul. I will learn to live on my own, but to ask for help when I need it. I will learn to live in our home in a way that suits my needs and circumstances, and to celebrate the good things and the good times, and to enjoy the music and the TV and films that we used to enjoy together, as well as the new things I find, and the things that I always had to cajole him into watching or listening to. I’ll adapt, and I’ll cope, and I’ll be OK.

But we had 47 years of companionship, 44 years of marriage, and in all those years we were never apart for more than a week or so. We’ve now been apart for nearly twelve weeks, and I don’t understand where he’s got to. Our conversation hadn’t ended; there are so many things I want to tell him or discuss with him, things I want to ask him (the name of that neighbour who was so kind the other day, where on earth he put the locking wheel nuts for the car, that sort of thing), plans I want to make with him. Maybe the strength of that sensation, that he’s just popped out somewhere and been inexplicably delayed, will fade. But for the last 47 years, our lives were woven together and that can’t be unravelled. The pattern of my life will be different, but I will still see the threads of our companionship running through it.

What is grief, if not love, persevering? I took that line from the Marvel TV series, Wandavision. It took us a while to understand what was happening in the show, but I can see now that it was all about grief. And grief is all about love. The shape and power of that grief and that love will change, but I don’t believe they’ll fade into nothingness. And I don’t want them to.

At the funeral, I talked about the ordinariness of the last day we had together, a day which is only memorable because it was the last one.

In 44 years of marriage, there are more days like that than there are portentous or memorable ones. Days like that are what a lifetime of companionship is all about. A lifetime (all our adult lives, anyway) of affection, laughter, sharing out tasks and sharing worries, bickering (about things that mattered and about things that absolutely didn’t), watching detective dramas and Marvel movies and Doctor Who, and listening to music. Lots and lots of listening to music.

I don’t know what the shape of my days will be, without him. I’ll learn to listen to music and to watch the programmes and films we both loved, without him. I’ll go to concerts and the cinema and the theatre with other people, and I’ll spend time with our kids and our families and with friends. It will be strange, and difficult. But I’m thankful for those 44 years of everyday days, as well as the momentous and challenging and glorious and awful days, every kind of day. So, as Ray Davies put it (and as Kirsty MacColl sang it):

Thank you for the days,

Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.

I’m thinking of the days,

I won’t forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,

I bless the light that lights on you believe me

And though you’re gone,

You’re with me every single day, believe me.

(R. Davies)

My love goes out to our children, who in their own profound grief, have given me so much strength, comfort and practical support. He was so very proud of them both, as am I.

So, 2022? I hope it will bring the completion of the PhD, weddings and babies, maybe a new knee for me. I can’t think much more widely than that at the moment, I’m afraid. I’m deliberately trying not to grasp the enormity of living alone as a permanent state not just (as it sometimes feels at present) as an anomaly, or an experiment, because when I do for a moment I feel so weary and so daunted. If I think a day or a week at a time, I can do this. Because I’m not doing it alone, but with people I love and who love me. And if I hold on tight to that, I’ll find the strength I need to keep on keeping on.

I will hold on to my hat and hang on my hope, and wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day. And this poem, Sheenagh Pugh’s ‘Sometimes’, which you can hear read by my dear friend Ruth Arnold, is for all of us: ‘The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.’