As we gazed up on the fireworks exploding in a cacophony of sound and color over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I believed myself the luckiest lady alive.
It was probably the most magical New 12 months’s Eve I’ve ever skilled; an ideal evening which is able to ceaselessly keep in my reminiscence.
It additionally marked the tip of 1 a part of my life, though I didn’t understand it then.
I had been invited to Sydney’s most unique occasion – the Lord Mayor’s Celebration on the Opera Home – and was fortunate sufficient to have been capable of take my dad and mom with me, who had been visiting from the UK that Christmas.
I used to be actually glowing with pleasure – closely pregnant with my first little one, I wasn’t consuming, however I didn’t want any alcohol to get into the spirit of issues.
I bear in mind feeling drained and ordering a Coke on the bar to pep me up simply earlier than midnight and the sugar-rush made my unborn son go kick-kick-kick, in my tummy.
It’s humorous how some occasions endure in your reminiscence ceaselessly and others are buried by your mind.
It was a beautiful evening, virtually like a dream, on that balmy summer season’s night simply over a decade in the past.
I knew then that this was a particular second, that life couldn’t get any higher; the sensation was virtually tangible.
Actually, that night was just like the grand finale, the closing variety of my outdated life, and the subsequent day, ushering in with it 2012, the beginning of my new existence.
No matter resolutions I made then had been shortly discarded by what that 12 months introduced with it.
The dear cargo I used to be nurturing, my son Teddy, was born three months later, to face a well being battle he couldn’t win.
By the subsequent New 12 months’s Eve, his life was virtually over and I spent it by his hospital mattress, in Melbourne. There will need to have been fireworks then, too, however I don’t bear in mind them.
I’ve one blurry {photograph} of New 12 months’s Eve 2011, of me and my darling mom, Elaine, beaming on the digicam, her wanting splendid, as she all the time did, in her sequined gown.
Mum was all the time the life and soul of the occasion and he or she danced and danced with my dad, spinning round, with glee, as David Campbell carried out on stage.
She was slightly out of breath and we didn’t recognise it, however she was exhibiting the primary signal of a situation which might slowly take her spirit and her physique, leaving us ceaselessly, earlier this 12 months.
Immediately is our first New 12 months’s with out her, however I wish to suppose she and Teddy are celebrating someplace collectively. I hope he’s dancing together with her, wherever they’re.
I’m not unhappy once I look again at that evening – I beloved each second of it on the time and I’m glad I did, as that’s what life is all about.
It’s actually not sophisticated: benefit from the second, love your family and friends and dance like there’s no tomorrow.
