Column Chronicles: Goodbye and auf Wiedersehen

Goodbye and auf Wiedersehen

Frank Cotolo
December 12, 2024

Greetings ladies, gentlemen and people identifying with other genders everywhere. Oh what a marvelous year is coming to an end. I only hope no catastrophe occurs before it is officially over so you can read this farewell message again and agree it was a marvelous year that just ended.

Think back if you will and even if you won't to recall myriad accomplishments since the year began. The first to the three-hundred-sixty-fifth, one after another in order were due to our wherewithall working in tandem and sometimes in multiple tandem until we saw the results were perfect or good enough.

We leave behind memories of how we strived - or is it strove - and endured - or is it endeared - as the seasons sometimes betrayed our ability to pursue our tasks. Even then we found times to sit back and rest and drink and laugh and drink and plan and drink. But we always planned to drink, right?

Now, though, it is time to raise our glasses and hopefully we have filled our glasses with good wine or aged scotch or dense whisky or grain alcohol, whatever, and in one gratifying moment we salute one another, though a few don't deserve it, and we drink the blessed liquids for all we attained by working in unison, sometimes in solo unison, but always having each others backs.

And we drink to those whom served with us but passed doing it; those whom would give anything to be where we are now, having had better luck than they did getting to this point, where the year dims and the stars shine in a sky where this planet all of us - living and dead - have lived and died now bid welcome to another three-hundred-sixty-five sunrises and sunsets.

And with the fresh start and same named months and days there is only the new plateau to reach without knowing what awaits us in the challeges we will face together, if not conjointly then collectively but certainly assembled and unitedly.

So we say to the past year, goodbye and auf Wiedersehen!

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.