Endings

Well, Dear Reader, it is almost the end of yet another year.

I'll have to say that this has been one of the worst I've endured but there is some faint glimmering of hope for the future.

Wow, I'm almost sounding like an optimist.

So here is how 2015 shaped up (warning: I may get a bit personal):

The big event of the year was the death of my father. It was not really unexpected, and his dying played out over the course of three months but, to be honest, it drained me physically and emotionally to the point where I actually felt relieved when he finally passed away.

I was a terrible son in many ways, I guess. The black sheep of the family, a difficult role when you are also the only sheep.

My father never really understood what made me tick and, to be fair, neither do I. Still.

He couldn't get that I was never content, as others were, with a life in stable employment and raising a family.

I think we agreed on an uneasy truce where he'd stop telling me I was wasting my life (and asking when I'd settle down and give him grandchildren). Mostly. 

However, he was the only close family I had. Which reminds me of this quote from William Gibson, who wrote about how the death of his parents affected him later in life:

Gene Wolfe once said that being an only child whose parents are dead is like being the sole survivor of drowned Atlantis. There was a whole civilization there, an entire continent, but it's gone. And you alone remember.   

Or maybe Roy Batty said it best:  

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Yeah.

If watching your father lying in a hospital bed as his life slowly ebbs from his body teaches you something, it is that there is a certain futility to living. All you ever were, all you ever wanted to be, ends in a small white room amidst the sounds of others going about their daily routines.

Life, just not yours, goes on.

This brings me to another matter. I shall be taking a leave of absence for a few months as I take my father's ashes back to the land of his birth. It was a pact I made with him years ago and I will carry out my duty as promised.

Actually, we are going on a road trip. One final adventure, as it were. I shall be retracing some of his travels as a young man - particularly during his wartime exploits - before scattering his ashes at the oak tree he planted as a young boy on the family farm.

I am really looking forward to this. Should be happening around April.

I was going to mention a few other notable occurrences for the year but have run out of time as have somewhere to be soon.

So with that in mind, have a safe and happy end of year. See you on the other side!