New Years Eve…

31st December 2021

I hate the new year, I always have. Never understood the huge cause of celebration and always found it a depressing time of year, even as a teen I preferred Christmas celebrations.

I lost my cousin Steve a few years ago, right before new year. I was the one who the police called when they found him in his flat. I remember I was at work and when they asked me if I knew him, if I was related I just knew what they were going to say. It was heartbreaking, we’d only got back in touch a couple of years before and we’d become close. He’d been so ill and I’d been planning to go surprise him in January, go stay and look after him for a few days. They think he was getting ready for bed when he had a massive heart attack. He was only 45. Instead I travelled to Yorkshire for his funeral in January, I still miss him and it made me hate new year even more.

Worse now, far far far worse. Losing Amber has swept me away with the intensity and the sheer pain of it, not just emotionally but physically too.

I’m trying to type this one eyed having just been hit with an aural migraine again. I’m getting far too many of them at the moment, they restarted up in Glasgow when Amber was in NICU, to the point I had to get a prescription for betablockers, something I’ve not needed to take in years for them. Usually I only get a few a year but recently they happen with an uncomfortable frequency, triggered no doubt by stress, exhaustion and despair.

I’m sitting waiting for my sight to return (usually 20 minutes or so) to drive and buy some wine for tonight. Staying home alone and to just talk to Amber in the stars.

Struggling with making choices at the moment and they are last minute depending on what I can cope with at that second and can change in a heartbeat alarmingly as if the breathe has been instantly sucked out of me. Choices I’ve made this week consist of choosing a silver birth certificate holder and what I’d like engraved on it for Amber. Also a silver trinket box engraved with a fox, Ambers name and date of birth for the lock of her hair I have. It arrived today and it’s beautiful.

I spent a couple of hours on two days trying to sort out practicalities. Ambers DLA application keeps being sent back to me with fresh forms, I’m finding this frustrating since my paediatrician sent a detailed form to them to avoid such a thing happening but I dealt with it anyway and hope that will satisfy them at last. Having to call UC and child benefit offices reduced me to floods of tears, as did contacting my area manager to inform her what has happened and that I’ve been put on sick for 3 months and renewing my business energy contract. It’s all done now more or less so I can go back to hibernating and endlessly and aimlessly wandering my house, in between getting baths just for something to do.

I feel utterly lost and hopeless right now, what I wouldn’t give to be curled up on my sofa again with Amber in my arms to welcome in the new year together. Instead a candle burns constantly by her side on the fireplace, if I make it to midnight which is doubtful I will drink to her and tell her how much I love and miss her, if not I’ll do the same before I go to bed, no doubt to toss and turn, another sleepless night full of dread for tomorrow, just another day without my baby girl.