So we move into 2010, starting yet another new year of hopes and dreams.

But may I take a moment of your time to ask you to contemplate, however briefly, those among us who are facing uncertainty.

I specifically refer to uncertainty of health or, perhaps sadder still, the certainty that health is slipping away and soon to be lost within the darkness that is death.

Over the last couple of years I have lost several friends to cancer. At the end of 2009 alone I lost 3 good friends to this dreaded disease.

Yesterday, on January 3rd 2010 I lost yet another. Again he was not an old man, at the most just in his early fifties and definitely younger than me.

He left a partner and a young family as have others of my recently passed friends.

They say that time heals all ills. I beg to differ. It never heals the loss of a loved one.

How do you explain to a young child that a parent will never be there again?

So please just remember that for some people the New Year won't be the start of better happier times and remember that there but for grace of whatever go we all.