As 2022 drew to a close, the wish I expressed in my New Year message was that we could all, in 2023, find the courage and strength not to wait for life to “stop being hard before deciding to be happy” (Nightbirde). A year on, I find myself, for the first time in my life, about to go into a new year without a key element in the love and security blanket that stopped my life ever getting truly hard. Fact is, all the potentially hard moments or experiences in my life before 7th October 2023, the day my father died, couldn’t negate the feelings of safety and assurance that came with having both my parents alive.

Yet, the grief that struck our family during the year also gave opportunity to appreciate the fortune we as individuals or as a family have created for ourselves. A year ago, I mentioned “a spiritually and physically better me which is all the better for being wrapped up in sustained, strengthened and new relationships, as well as fired up by new purposes”, and thanked you all for your input to that offer to the incoming year. Well, 2023 had in store much more testing and proving than I could have ever imagined, and has been an education.

The year’s key lessons have been brutal confirmation that “Grief is the price we pay for love” (Queen Elizabeth II), and, proof that “…people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” (Maya Angelou). The deep pain of losing my beloved father has for eighty-six days and counting sat side-by-side with kindness and love generated by how OrKabay made people feel, or how he inspired and guided us to make people feel.

All in, I think the spiritually better me I promised for 2023 happened, albeit not entirely by design, and I see that as work in progress as I go into 2024. As for the physically better me I also promised, in comparison with 2022, I offer shaving nearly three hours off my time in the 100 mile RideLondon-Essex event in May, and running the Atlanta Thanksgiving Half Marathon over five minutes quicker as proof of delivery there. Not quite New Year resolutions, but they were close enough, and I therefore present these outputs and outcomes satisfied with my performances, grateful to many for their support, and absolutely thankful for the continued favours of the Almighty.

Therefore, as we go into a new year, I pray and ask, as I did a year ago, that we continue to be each other’s keepers, so we can increase the chance that 2024 is happy for others… as much as for ourselves.

Happy New Year All