Love is a Sheltering Tree

I didn’t send a round-robin letter with my Xmas card (I enclosed a poem instead). So it’s now the time for my review of the past year. I’m tempted to say that 2014 has been a very up and down year for me, but aren’t they all?

On the up side: I’m still free of cancer after three and a half years, I restarted hillwalking and cycling for the first time since my surgery, and I went to Orkney and reconnected with Patrick my best mate at primary school after a gap of over 50 years. On the down side: I got a bad knee injury that has prevented me from participating in many activities for over six months, and just as my injury was beginning to get better I was diagnosed with asthma. I've had more debilitating medical problems in the past four years than in all the rest of my life put together.

Perhaps swings and roundabouts would be a better summary; or one step forwards, one step backwards, one step sideways. But normal life is like this, I hear you say: never smooth and easy, always a challenge. Although when you are younger you get advice from older people (perhaps your parents) who try to intimate to you about the unexpected vagaries of life and the coping skills needed to deal with them. But the young with their more simplistic and inexperienced view of the world are never able to accept this advice and charge on until they encounter the switchbacks, roller-coasters and reversals for themselves. Yes, resilience and versatility are crucial and hard-earned life-skills.

Coping with life’s reversals does get a bit easier the more you have of them. But this doesn’t save you from the pain and unhappiness of each one: despite previous experience, it hurts every time. What you do seem to gain is the fortitude to get through it, alongside the knowledge that it probably won’t last forever.

Crucial to my life this year has been the love and support of a good woman. T and I have been together for 15 months now and our relationship has become an unwavering rock to rely on and a deep source of sustenance. This has been both my greatest up, and the help that has enabled me to surmount all the downs. We are committed to each other. I cannot imagine life without her.