Following a very eventful year, I have more big changes coming up.
Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of the death of my beloved husband Brian. We were together for nearly 50 years. Brian is always in my thoughts anyway, so I don’t suppose the anniversary will change the way I feel, but it does seem significant and I appreciate the friends and relatives who are helping me to mark the occasion.
In a month or so I am going to move house. Leaving the villa that was our marital home for 25 years will involve a mixture of regret and relief. I love the old property with its large garden, and all its memories, but it is too big for one person and requires continual maintenance. The new house needs a complete renovation, which is proving both exciting and expensive, but will be beautiful when it is finished. Going there will mark the start of a new chapter in my life.
And my 80th birthday is approaching. This milestone is making me more conscious of mortality. Having lost my partner, and being aware of all the other losses that come with advancing age, I have no wish to live for many more years. But so far I am still reasonably fit and healthy and enjoying life. I hope to make worthwhile use of whatever time is left, though don’t aspire to measure up to Joan Collins who starred in the recent film My Duchess at the age of 92, or novelist Edna O’Brien was 88 when she wrote the novel Girl.
Will I write any more books? I’ve nearly finished a short memoir about my marriage to Brian. I hesitate to publish such a personal document on Amazon, so will just print a few copies for any friends or relatives who may be interested. I don’t feel inspired to write another novel at present, but am running a professional marketing campaign for my back fiction list. Here are short video trailers for two of my books, No Good Deed and You Yet Shall Die.
https://go.screenpal.com/watch/cOXVbznyszo.
https://go.screenpal.com/watch/cOXVbunysaB
A period of my career back in the 1980s involved “life event” research. Life event experience is strongly linked to the development of depression, and to a lesser extent that of physical ill health. The impact of an event depends on the individual’s resilience, how far the situation is under their own control, how they perceive it – for example as a punishment or a challenge – and how well they are supported by social contacts and adequate funds. The majority of life events appear “negative”, but even “positive” ones can be stressful, whereas the negative ones often turn out to have a silver lining in the long term.
