To my astonishment it’s nearly 8 years since my last blog post, and I think it’s high time for an update. My youngest daughter, Lorna, is encouraging me to do this, and is in fact acting as my ghost writer. She is writing this post, and will be compiling future posts on this blog, with my editorial input. 

Much has happened in my life since 2016, most notably the passing of my dear wife Elizabeth, at the end of 2018. We were married for 58 years and although I miss her physical presence in my daily life, I’m looking forward to our reunion when I make my own transition to non-physical form. 

My eldest son, Fergus, went missing in 2014 during a work trip to Switzerland. As soon as we were notified of his absence I felt sure his life had ended. It wasn’t until 3 years later, in 2017, that his physical remains were found at the foot of a cliff. Elizabeth had always hoped he would be found alive, and so this news was upsetting for her, but in time the knowledge of his fate did give her peace of mind. 

I was the eldest of three children. My sister Margaret died in 1991, leaving me and my youngest sister Joy as the remaining siblings. In the 1980s and 1990s I made periodic trips from Scotland to London to attend meetings and conferences, and often stayed with Joy, who lived just outside London at the time. She later moved to Lode, near Cambridge, to be near other family members. Since Joy and I were both getting older and less venturesome, I had resigned myself to probably not meeting up with her again in this life. However, in 2020, Lorna, and I decided to drive down to Lode for a visit. It was just as Covid-19 was making its presence felt, and fortunately for us we made the trip shortly before the first lockdown prohibited such travel. It was many years since Joy and I had been together, and it was a very happy reunion. It went so well that the following year, in June of 2021, we again drove down for a visit. Joy passed away in November of that year and I felt blessed to have made those two visits to her towards the end of her life.

At the time of writing my previous post, I was 87 years old, and this blog was subtitled ‘Musings of an octogenarian’. That has had to be changed to ‘Musings of a nonagenarian’ as I have now reached the grand old age of 94. I sometimes think about my father, and his father, who both lived into their 90s, although neither of them reached 94. It seems slightly strange to me that I’ve got to this age and still appear to be in remarkably good health. It’s perhaps just as well that none of us knows the date of our death in advance, but it’s a topic I think about more and more as I get older. Due to my beliefs about what happens when the physical body ceases to function, the death experience is something I’m really quite looking forward to. If I were given the choice, I should very much like to pass on quietly in my sleep, but I’ll be interested to see how it all pans out.