For Auld Lang Syne

The beat of the music from open air concerts on the trendy Waterfront district was interrupted by fireworks soaring into the air against the awe inspiring backdrop of Table Mountain and the drunken cheers of the sweltering crowds of locals and tourists densely thronging the streets and packing the quayside bars and restaurants. Cape Town was celebrating the arrival of the New Year with a carnival vibe and I found myself wondering whether or not to join everybody in welcoming it in or to regret the passing of the old year.

Louise and I never marked New Year. We preferred to spend the evening quietly at home and were often in bed before midnight. But soon after her death I had decided that it was important for me to be in the country of her birth on the last day of the last calendar year of her life. I was never entirely clear why. Louise was born to a British family and remembered virtually nothing of her early years in South Africa. The family connections with the African continent remained strong, however, and there was some nebulous sense of closing a loop, honouring her by bringing both ends of her existence together. 

Cape Town's New Year celebrations

And having travelled 6,000 miles for the occasion it seemed as though I should do more than sit in my hotel with a room service sandwich and quietly reflect and write. So as midnight approached I joined the crowds and counted down the final minutes of 2015. It was another surreal moment on this strange journey which has led me to the most unlikely of people, places, activities and achievements.

Rationally the New Year should have no particular significance. It's just a date. Just the start of another of the 340 or so days since Louise's death. But the symbolism is strong. While it might sound strange to want to hold on to a year which has brought so much misery, the worst of my life by a countless multiple, I can't help feeling as though the passing of the old year takes Louise further out of reach, placing her, for the first time, very firmly in the past.

I can no longer talk about what we were doing together this year. Since Louise died in January I can barely talk about what we were doing together last year either. Our last really precious memories and times together, our last holidays, our last Christmas, the last shows and family events we attended together, are now back in the apparently distant past of the year before last. 

I can no longer even say that my wife died 'earlier this year'. This is important because of the sense of remoteness it engenders. I worry that people hearing the story for the first time will fail to understand the continuing impact of it, assuming that at such a distance I must be 'over it'. And I worry that those who already know the story will begin to forget. To forget about Louise and, as the firsts turn into seconds, to forget about me. When you have lost your partner in a world designed for couples you forever fret about becoming invisible.

It also feels like a step away from Louise because she didn't know this new year. It's part of an ongoing process which will steadily leave her behind. Things that will over time become familiar to me; people, events, fashions, technology, will never be familiar to her. It will become more and more difficult for me to talk to Louise without having to explain background and context. Just as she will forever remain 40 while I continue to age, she will always remain in 2015. 

This divergence in experience and knowledge started the moment that Louise died and has continued with each day that passes, from major life events, she never knew our niece, born three months after she took her life, nor the baby daughter of one of her best friends, to mundane domestic rearrangement and refurbishment. She doesn't know that the temperamental dishwasher has now been replaced, the gift from a Guinean Olympic delegate who stayed with us during the London Games has finally been framed or that we (always still 'we' and 'ours', never 'I' or ''mine') have a new TV and broadband connection. Somehow the arrival of a new year accelerates this process. We are connected by the past and separated by the future. 

But while the distance from Louise that 2016 signifies is distressing, I welcome the fact that it also offers distance from the act itself, the days around it and the most acute stages of grief. Not a fresh start exactly, but a chance to clear my head and begin to try to live life again. I'm proud that I have at least survived to reach this point, a landmark that was so distant eleven months ago that I could barely even conceive of it. In some respects, contradictorily, the fact that people may treat me as a normal robust human again rather than a bereaved object of sympathy and pity is also good news. The coming year may bring less of the angled head and sympathetic eyes. I might still need to wrap myself in the cloak of widowhood much of the time but more and more frequently it feels liberating to discard it. 

The reason that Louise and I didn't celebrate New Year was because of the sense of uncertainty and foreboding associated with an unknown future. Last year, ironically, we agreed that for once this was absent. The previous twelve months had been so traumatic both for us and our respective families that we were grateful to escape into a year which we were convinced could only be better.

Perhaps it's foolish to tempt fate in the same way again. However, I have to believe that the coming twelve months will be more positive, a time when I am able to continue to honour and remember Louise but can also make space for other things and allow my eternally busy mind some respite. A time too when hope begins to be converted into something of substance as I lay the foundations for my new life. And a time, dare I say it, when I end a year happier than I begin it.