One year ago today I got through my first New Year’s Eve without Jane. She had died just 21 days before. I went out with my brother, his wife, and their son for dinner. They dropped me off at my youngest brother’s house. I was in bed by 10 p.m. I had a flight out of Seattle early the next morning.

I got home from Seattle last night. This year I will do what I was afraid to do last year: face New Year’s Eve here in the house that is our home.

I look at those first two paragraphs and I realize why this blog does not make the list of sites recommended by the Carcinoid Cancer Foundation’s latest e-newsletter.  When the list came out this week I will admit I was initially disappointed walkingwithjane.org was not on it. Then I went to each of the sites they recommended and read them.

All are written by people who are living with NET for others who are living with the disease. They are uniformly upbeat in their tone and their outlook. One even includes a video about how to mix blackberry powder and use it to alleviate the symptoms of the disease. They are writing about life with the disease.

They are living with the disease because they were diagnosed earlier in the process of the disease than Jane was. The stories I write here have to do with the surviving spouse dealing with the aftermath of the disease: the empty rooms, the empty space in the bed–the echos of a life. I am a constant reminder that this disease kills–that we have only delaying tactics and ways to alleviate the symptoms, and not a cure–not for most who get this diagnosis.

This daily expiation is not something anyone freshly diagnosed with NET should read most of the time. Those folks need a strong daily dose of optimism they are unlikely to find here. Information about the latest research? Yes. Links to support groups and foundations? Yes. Hope that we will find a cure? Yes. An advocate for increasing the money available for research? Yes.

But I lost my wife to this vile thing. I watched her bravery and supported it. I watched her optimism and watered it and fed it the way I hope every spouse whose mate gets the NET/CS diagnosis will. I talked with her doctors and her nurses and every technician who came through the door to make sure they knew everything they needed to know to give her the best possible care. Most importantly, I surrounded her with love.

We did all we could to cure her illness. We did all we could to heal her wounds. But, in the end, I had to let her go–her body could no longer fight the disease–and keeping her alive would have been the kind of cruelty she hated most. She killed the cancer the only way she finally could: by dying herself and taking it with her.

Tonight, ten minutes before midnight, I will open the half bottle of champagne we would have shared and pour it into one of the glasses we used each year. Just before the ball drops, I will toast her final struggle and drink it to the lees.

Then I will pour a second glass and–at the stroke of midnight, when all the world goes mad–toast the future.

Happy New Year to you all.