New Year's Invitation

There is a sense in me that I should write something today. This is the time of year, is it not, to review that which the last twelve months has delivered us.

I am glad in a way of the timing of all this. I am glad I am able to close some parts of this story today, tonight, tomorrow. I intend to leave the remnants of his illness, the dying, behind me, and actually the more time that passes the easier it is to let those parts fade. I'll never forget it, I'll remember the pain, but I can see more clearly the man who was my husband before the cancer. I am grateful for this - I don't need to remember him dying. However it has meant the pain of his loss has intensified. I miss him, in every way, all the time. I miss him holding my hand, kissing my head, laughing, smiling, talking on the phone, sleeping, reading to his children. I miss talking about the news, the sport, our ideas, what to have for dinner, whether we need to buy more toilet rolls. I can't talk to him about our children, our precious children, about the pain they are suffering, the problems they are having, the things they are saying, feeling, thinking. It is a physical pain I feel and it is in every bone, muscle, sinew, nerve and vein. 

I write this from Sydney and it is clear to me now how much more I have lost than just my husband. Part of me, it is safe to say, died this year. Such melodrama! I don't care. It feels very real. There is a heaviness to me now that was never present, not even during his illness. A spark, a flame that has been extinguished. However: the space where the flame was has been filled with something else, something promising and different and surprising. There is a confidence and a maturity and a purpose. It is all about the health and happiness of me and my babies, the future, the promise of further adventure. Let me quote something he wrote in the wonderful book he left for his children:

One of the most remarkable things I've found is that since becoming ill, yes I have plummeted the depths and still do regularly and am finding the whole experience incredibly distressing, but I've also had some of the happiest times of my life, which sounds perverse. I've always thought that your ability to feel is like a symmetrical waveform and that to be able to feel intense highs you have to open yourself up emotionally, to make yourself capable of feeling those intense highs; but by opening yourself up emotionally to feel the highs you are also open to feeling terrible lows. Being sick has opened me up again to be able to feel, as well as the lowest possible points, also the highest possible points.

This is how the Bunker girls will approach 2015: turning the curves of our lows into highs, then we will hold hands as we hit the lows again. It promises to be as tough as it will be spectacular: but as Keith himself articulated so beautifully, you can't have one without the other.

So I suppose this is my invitation, from us to you, to be part of it. I would love to think that 2015 will be as much about harnessing your energy as much as it will ours. It won't be easy, it will be hard, but if it involves us Bunkers I can guarantee it will at least be interesting. Thanks so much for all your love, support, friendship and help this year. Who's in for the next?