Last year I learned a lot about being alone. With Ray in the Nursing Home I was alone in the house here but Trev and Edie were close by. Then they moved a couple of suburbs over and I went okay through the day but the nights were bad. In the end I managed to sleep despite the creaks and groans of the house and all the noises that I had never heard before. Every person who lives alone knows those noises. The anxiety attacks lessened and I thought I was doing okay.

This year has been a busy one for me as I put so much into looking after Ray at the Nursing Home, with so many medical emergencies caused by the seizures it seemed some days as if I lived there myself. Quite often I was there for long hours, sometimes all day as the staff tried to figure out the best treatment, the best non-invasive approach to the seizures. Had Ray not been so debilitated already the hospital would have been a better place for him to be but they were not kind to him there. He was always like a fish on a slab, naked with just a towel over him (easier to clean up as he was incontinent). Not a dignified way for a person of his sensibilities to be.

I am thankful that his suffering is over but I miss him dreadfully. I have been having so much trouble even contemplating Christmas but I know it is up to me to give a lead to my family and teach the children and grandchildren that life goes on. But it has to be a conscious effort now. I don't have the purpose in life I had before. I am no longer motivated by the care of others. I now need to put into place my own reasons for living.

In the last few months I have started to come to terms with being alone, really on my own. There were times when I wanted to scream at my kids: "Whose job is it to take care of me? Can't you see I am hurting?" but I know they have their own lives and each of them is coping with their own pain in different ways. Their lives are busy and fraught with their own problems and they don't need mine to add to them. Sure they think of me and do ring me occassionally but no-one else is going to help me live my life.

Then Mum was really close to death and I transferred my caring skills to her. The Nursing Home staff were marvellous to her and I could not fault them. In most cases she was clean and tidy when I arrived and when she wasn't I found someone to clean her up and make her fresh. I know the care these days is not what it was in times past and they do need reminding that this is a human being they are caring for, someone's mother, grandmother, great grandmother and treat them as they would want their own to be treated.

Now Mum is gone too, Yesterday I went to the Post Office and signed for her death certificate. I visited the cemetery and spent some time there thinking about my loved ones and how it is time for me to really go on alone now. It is hard to even think about that. Here at home I can somehow blot out that fact and just do what has to be done and then sleep or read or watch tv to blank out the evening hours. But the evidence, the fresh piles of clay on the graves, is there when I go for a visit, a reminder of the fresh pain in my heart.

I have joined a site for widows and in a way find a fellow feeling there. But new widows are not going to be supportive as they themselves are still in need of support. It is not like the long term caregivers or survivors here who can help the newbies by saying: "Been there done that, honey, here's a few thoughts that might get you through it too." The new widows, each coping in her situation, are not able to do that as yet. I have Bonnie and another friend from Strokenet there and that helps as they have known me for a long time so know my background and where I am coming from. I have that with a few other widows in real life too, especially at church, so I am lucky in that way.

Christmas, only six days away, a time for rejoicing and marvelling once again that in a Babe in Bethlehem there was a new beginning. Yes, even for the widows. A new fresh start is what humankind needs from time to time. How timely with so many innocent lives lost in the recent massacre. The fresh start enables up to look at what we are clinging onto from the past and ask ourselves: "Is that appropriate to where we are now?" Souls searching is good for us, enabling us to let go of the past and walk into the future less burdened. Old prejudices and needs just hold us back. We need to be free to change for the better.

I am not sure how those thoughts help me. I know I need to declutter my house and declutter my mind but as we all know that is not easy to do. My house is a monument to my past, full of old school reports, old cards and letters,paperwork from heaven only knows when. It is not easy to let go of things that might some day come in handy, fill the gap, suit the need. I am a self-confessed pack rat. Which is why I can never find that one precious document I do need right now. It is under the piles of things that might come in handy one day. That is so frustrating.

I noticed last night at the Lions Club Christmas Party that it is still a couples world. That makes it hard for those of us that are not a member of a couple. It was noticeable in that the wife sitting next to me waited for her husband to get her a drink, I got my own, she went and got her meal but he got her cutlery, he also got her dessert for her. It is nice and the way it should be but it is not the way it is for me now. Nor has it been that way for a long, long time now as Ray was incapable of waiting on himself, let alone waiting on me. I am independent anyway and don't need to be waited on but it would be nice to think that someone had my best interests at heart, and was there for me if I needed them to be.

Last night we shared our venue with a Year Six graduation, high school is Year Seven here, and little girls in high heels and boys in their good clothes with their hair slicked back were everywhere. Crowds of adoring parents with cameras came and went. It was very noisy and the parking lot was full and I had to park way away from the venue. At the end of the evening I had to walk quite a way to get back to my car. It was just another reminder that now I have to learn to walk alone.