So Christmas and New Year are behind us….

For the NAW, the end of December and especially January is a very busy period. The phone seems never to stop ringing! The truth is that holiday times can be very lonely  - even sometimes when surrounded by friends and family. This is particularly true for those who are thinking how different it was just twelve months previously.

According to something I heard on the radio this morning, this seasonal emotional turmoil isn’t exclusive to widows. Apparently January 7 is the big day for picking up a pen or a making a phone call to fix up an appointment with a solicitor to arrange a divorce! For some, staying together at Xmas just hasn’t worked out, and the time for separation has arrived!

Of course, those of us who are widows and widowers, who no longer have someone we love beside us, and who wish every second of the day that we could just have them back, even for ten minutes, can’t help reflecting that our situation is so much worse.

I’ve thought a lot about this and at one time would have definitely agreed. Now, I am not so sure. I have divorced friends, and although their experience has certainly been different, I wouldn’t want to minimise their feelings.

Yes there is something uniquely horrible about a relationship cruelly ending, often dramatically – certainly painfully – when neither of you wanted it to happen, when a good and happy life had seemed to stretch in front of you.

But at least in my case, and I feel this more and more as time goes by, the fact is that Mike left me a better woman than he found me! In no small measure through him, I grew into a capable, confident person, I was sure of myself, I enjoyed my warm, loving life. When he died, yes I was devastated but my sense of self worth was, thanks to his love, still there intact …. though it took some time to realise it. I had no sense as do many divorced people of a wasted or disappointed life….

Of course, that may not seem relevant in the early days, and not all widows and widowers have good relationships either – but clearly something of value has kept them together. And those of us who really were part of a happy partnership, though we might wish to turn the clock back, have much to be grateful for…. Many of us know for a fact that, no matter how bad it seems on a dark January evening, there is light at the end of the tunnel….