None of us can predict what happens in a given year.
There is no way of knowing what will befall us in a given year.
There are years of great hope. There are years of despair. Everything is in front of us. Everything is behind us.
We are all going to heaven.
We are all going the other way.
This is a paraphrase of how Charles Dickens, the great 19th Century writer, posed the questions and answered them.
This was a year when I lost my mother.
I knew it was coming – she was 97 – but when the moment arrived I was not prepared for it.
It is a moment frozen in time for me. 2018 for me is the year I lost my mother. Many, many Everett residents and readers of this newspaper lost their mothers this year. Many others lost their fathers, their brothers, their sons, their daughters, their cousins and their friends.
To all of you, I am with you.
The Christmas table without my mother… well what is there to say.
And now the New Year is upon us.
There will be no visiting my Mum before the ball drops in Times Square and wishing her a Happy New Year, nor will she be waving me off and telling me she loves me and to “have a great time. I’ll be fine.”
What this year has taught me about the next year coming is that we should all be grateful for having our loved ones around, for the beating of their hearts on this earth, even if we are at odds with them, or deeply in love to the point of blindness about them.
Out with the old.
In with the new.
Auld Lang Syne…you’ve got to be kidding me.
This has been a year of tremendous change for me, and for this city which the Leader Herald so proudly serves.
Nothing remains the same forever, and 2018 certainly has proven this ages old adage.
We know this for all of you reading this, who have made it through another year of our lives…that life is the blessing. The beating heart on this earth is really all that matters for when you are gone from this earth, when your heart has stopped beating, well, what comes next is all about uncertainty and debate.
The city has experienced another year of growth and the questions that come with it.
What will 2019 bring?
It is quite impossible to imagine. History can’t be written until time has passed and events are recorded.
If 2018 was an indication of things to come, well, then we all need to be ready to enjoy our successes, to be made sad by our defeats, for all of us to stand tall and strong through the difficult moments, and to push everything that weighs on us out of the way to have a good time.
Having a good time is what life should be about.
Being who we want to be, is what our lives ought to be about.
2018 is over.
In the sage words of one of our friends and readers: “Let 2019 be a year in which we all act more Kindly toward one another and speak more kindly of each other.
It starts with each of us as individuals.
Happy New Year to one and all.
Health, wealth and happiness to all of you in 2019!