End of another year

It was so fun when I was a little kid and New Year's seemed like this great, big, important thing that required planning and activity. There'd be all these rituals that had to be carried out correctly. The coming new year seemed to have a physical presence that would need to be accommodated, an ocean liner nearing a small harbor. For decades now it's just brought on a shrug and the only plans have to do with what stores and offices will close early New Year's Eve and closed New Year's Day.

Me, alone, in 1960.

2018 has seen the amputation of my right leg, the shattering of my right shoulder, a likely terminal diagnosis related to the cancer that took the leg and prostate cancer bad enough that I'll be getting radiation treatment for it beginning on the third day of 2019.
When you tell young people about the bad things that happened to you in a given year, they say cheery things about the new year being a better one. That makes sense when you're under forty. At that age, your sadness comes from things that will heal—a pet's death, the end of a relationship, the loss of a job. When you get older that rule breaks. You're aging. Your immune system permits access to disease and nothing will make your muscles as firm and your skin as taut as before. The next year is probably going to be worse than the one you just survived, and that's true of the year after that and all the years that follow until none follow. 
I'll spend the night alone, as usual. I am always alone and have been for so long now that I prefer it that way.