once around the sun

Time is so subjective. I know, its not December yet, but already so many people have said to me "how this year has really flown by", which to me is a sign of how busy they have been. Paradoxically for me I have been busy yet this time seems distorted out of proportion into what feels like ages.

For me this year is marked in some ways by the 6th of July, as that more or less started things off in my annus horribilis. Today is the first anniversary of my fathers death, which was followed by the death of my dearest Anita barely a month later. Then there was my own trials with the infection which surfaced from my heart operation from the previous year.

Calendars are interesting tools, as they represent this cycle we all make in our orbit around the sun. Each year we wind up in the same place relative to the sun, but of course (as the sun too moves through space on its orbit in the galaxy at about 675,000km/h) in a completely different place. So a lot has changed when that annual digit ticks over and we are back at the same point on the calendar (except the year).

Looking at the calendar I see that a lot has happened for me at about this point in our orbit:

• my Dad died on the last orbit
• my Mum died the day after (6 orbits earlier)
• my wife was born two days after then (but quite a few orbits earlier)

No wonder I have almost no memories of what we did for her birthday on those years.

It seems so long ago now that Anita and I were dealing with all the things from Dads death, yet it was only a year ago and we only did all those things over a period of 45 days. When she left to go to visit her family it seemed to me months had gone by. So busy and yet somehow the things done seemed to not disappear off the view.

I suspect that this year too will be all of three hundred and sixty five days long (rather than just a year). All the things have started the preparation for my migration to Finland. In less than a month I will be standing on Finnish soil and visiting her grave for the first time since September last year.

I have believed for a long time that a man is only as good as his word. The insubstantial and flimsy make promises which they forget sooner than the sunset. Even for a stranger if I give my word I keep it.

Circles have stood to mean many things in the symbolism of peoples. A perfect orbit would be a circle. We often wear rings as symbols of things (rather than as simple ornaments). My wedding ring was my gold standard promise to Anita. That was simply to love her all my life. That made her happy enough to write on the ring which she gave to me to wear: Silloin on kesä minulla

Perhaps I am too proud, but none the less I expect my promise to her will last as long as the gold in that ring.

That she is not here beside me is something I am learning to adapt to. That she is nowhere is something perhaps I can never accept. Probably one day I will know the answer to that (or if the nihilists are right I never will).

Interestingly in this last year my thoughts are with her and not with my parents. That is not to say that I have not given thanks to my parents for helping me to be where I am, but rather to say that leaving home was a journey of my life. I returned many times, often to help them. But each return was part of an orbit around another center.

Anita became my center ... now that her presence in this space has vanished (and there only remains what is in my mind) I have no center to my orbit.

Oh well, once more around the sun shall we?