The annual exercise of writing and dispatching Christmas cards to family and friends has just ended.

The process involves digging out the tattered Christmas Address Book which contains too much information to lose, and yet too much effort to transfer onto digital media at the moment!

The Christmas Address Book has a poignant effect on me, because it has various crossings out where acquaintances have died, or where relationships have ended or started or been replaced.

The Christmas Address Book tells me that relationships are not necessarily permanent, they have changed and evolved, ended and started in a variety of ways which have been accompanied in the lives of my acquaintances, in situations of intense pain and overwhelming joy.

The Christmas Address Book does not provide a narrative on the stories, it just provides the brutal facts, with a crossed out name, and an added one here and there.

The Christmas Address Book does not tell of the struggle some of us undergo to maintain our names side by side, to avoid the fatal or crushing stroke of the pen, which signals that a marriage has ended naturally or by law.

At this time, I ponder over and over with renewed anxiety the fate of my own name in the Christmas Address Book of my friends, and pray that I will find the courage to take the path best suited for all concerned, for a happy and fulfilling and loving onward life .

My next blog will be: No Photograph Taken

William Defoe