A welcome to the new year.

The first week of January is now over and I'm breathing again and happy - relieved - to see a few brave daffodils bloom in the border by the front door.  The (ridiculously early) wild garlic flowering in one of the hedges nearby also fools me into thinking spring is close, so now, my shoulders are relaxing.

This has been a strange, stressful season and I'm all over the show.  New diaries have been sprung into action with no pleasure at all - no frisson of the possibilities of fresh pages in a lovely new journal.  Needs must and I've been in organisational overdrive in an effort to keep things on track.  

A pile of unopened Christmas presents still waits on the floor where the tree was until yesterday.  Barely touched Christmas cake waits and the fridge is full of unexpected food gifts - hearty soups and delicious pies - delivered by church friends showing love in the most practical of ways.

Christmas Eve started well, but by lunchtime, we'd a paramedic first responder hooking dad up to an ECG machine, confirming a heart attack and in minutes, we were in an ambulance en route to the hospital.  The days since have been spent juggling home stuff, a slightly bewildered and very anxious mum who lives with me, twice daily hospital calls, visits to an in-law, seriously ill in a different hospital and work - where half the team left unexpectedly at the end of the year.  I think the word for my life at the moment is 'intense'.

But, having had several weeks of 'up close and personal' access to Britain's National Health Service, I'm reminded again of how downright amazing it is when it works.  I'm grateful and humbled by the sheer dedication and kindness of the paramedics, nurses, doctors, porters, cooks, cleaners and others who make this lumbering, clunky, vastly under-resourced machine so magnificent in an emergency.  

So now we're about to enter the world of daily carers, and all the accompanying accoutrements - an air bed, walking aid, commode chair... and soon, MacMillan nurses - dad's cancer was already progressing rapidly. 

But next week, his pile of Christmas gifts will be opened - though the best gift will be him, back home with us.  Then, with time to gather ourselves and talk, we'll plot a way along the road to a new kind of 'normality'.