Invariably around this time of year the thinkers among us will be seized by a bit of introspection: with the closing of a year, we will begin to think about our lives, the failures and gains we’ve experienced over the past year tempered by the hope and promise implied by the dawning of a new one. Very often, though, dissatisfaction is rife, prompting the drafting of a list — the clichéd New Year’s Resolutions — for the reinstatement of those thwarted dreams and ambitions of the old year. It’s an empty ritual; we all know it but we still do it, even if just mentally. You know the drill: I’ll exercise more and eat healthier this year. I’ll keep in touch with friends and family more this year. This is the year I’ll finally leave that no-count man who’s the reason I eat the way I do and don’t talk to my family, anyway.

Whatever.

They all go south, these resolutions, even before the Christmas tree is stripped and the ornaments carefully replaced in the cupboards. So much for your happy endings. And don’t even bother to contemplate your new beginnings. I stopped making those infernal lists a long time ago. I hated the way they’d make me feel like a loser every time I realised that each entry had been present on the previous year’s list. I decided to simply go with the flow. Whatever I accomplished, I accomplished — and sometimes you accomplish more than you give yourself credit for because you don’t count the little things — whatever I didn’t, so be it. No pressure.

Still, this doesn’t prevent me from thinking about endings at the first sign of a nip in the air or the appearance of poinsettia in bloom or hearing the strains of one of my favourite Christmas ballads, Luther Vandross’s poignant and beautiful Every Year, Every Christmas, which has taken on an entirely different meaning and emotion since my mother’s death. But, these days, the reflection is not simply about the year that’s ending, however, giving thanks for the little battles that were won and contemplating all the opportunities that were wasted. It’s really about meditating, if anything, on the transience of life. How can it not be? Even in this season that the Christian world celebrates the life of one sent to Earth so that we could have it, we’re aware that we’re surrounded by death. Let’s face it: none of us knows if another year is promised to us. I remember the last end-of-year that my mother was alive. We were sitting on the verandah thinking about the approaching year. We were both pensive, the way it often was when we sat talking on the verandah. I distinctly remember her wondering aloud who would make it out of 2006 alive. Six months later, she was dead.

I don’t know about you, but the idea of an end strikes the fear of God into us, doesn’t it? And it’s not only as it regards death, either. The concept of finiteness in general troubles me. The fact that nothing lasts forever. The Christmas meal I would have enjoyed only yesterday will be, by now, only a memory. Less sublime concerns leave me unsettled when I think of their temporary nature. I, for example, have issues with suitable endings with my stories and my columns. For me, the worst part of writing is finding the right end. I don’t want to go on for too long and risk rendering the work irrelevant because it’s too rambling. Nor do I want to be too abrupt. At any rate, how is a body of thought distilled and relegated to a few words, mere words, themselves fleeting, like our grasp on them, then simply abandoned, as it were, upon publication, to make way for the next column, the next story? It’s the same sort of existential nightmare encountered with reading a book — if it’s really good, I don’t want it to end because how can the next book possibly be anything but a letdown? However, if the writing is stultifying or the pacing is challenging, how do I make myself stop reading when I’ve in fact made a tacit covenant with the author, upon buying her book and settling down to read it, to see it through to the bitter end?

Endings are frightening bastards.

Looking back now, even some of those so-called fairy tales we were read as children alluded to, but never came outright and described, the vicissitudes that came after the end. Those guys, your Lewis Carroll, your Brothers Grimm and your Hans Christian Andersen, knew the deal. The Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed and blew houses down — somewhere in there, somebody knew that economic recession was a gale force wind that had the potential to leave its victims homeless. And poor Humpty Dumpty. Poor, poor bugger. Sitting on a wall all content and whatnot. What a tragic end for him. The question is: why were all the king’s horses and all the king’s men trying to put him together again? Why didn’t they rush him to an egg hospital? And can anybody not see the first reported incident of child abuse, at the very least, reckless endangerment of a minor, with that baby being rocked way in the treetop? When the wind blows the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all? How did our blood not run cold at that gruesome little picture?

It all comes down to how things end, doesn’t it? Romance ends. Innocence leaves. Old years pass quietly away amid noisemakers and tuneless renditions of Auld Lang Syne.

Nothing lasts forever. Even Death is inevitable, which makes living all the more imperative.

Let me take the opportunity to wish for you, dear reader, what I wish for myself: as much living as is possible this coming year.