 |
| Unknown Manila relative not identified in our family album |
Just about everybody that may follow my blog is aware that
my Rosemary and I have been getting a daily delivered (at the door) NY Times. The best moment of the day
happens with our ritual (every day with few exceptions) of breakfast in bed
with the Times and the Vancouver Sun
and with the added comfort (now) of our brother and sister cats, Niño and Niña.
Until recently the Sunday edition was delivered on Saturday
evenings. But beginning about two months ago we now get the Sunday paper on
Sunday. Can I complain? I don’t think
so.
The pandemic has led me to look in my phone at 9PM (12AM in
NY) and read the next day’s opinion columns.
This past Sunday our daughter stayed with us in a short
visit from her home in Lillooet. This meant that we read our Sunday NY Times in the
evening.
I hit astounding pay dirt, which parallels my thoughts
these last months, as I contemplate my impending disappearance into the
inevitable mortal coils.
The fine essay by Bill Shapiro in the Sunday, The NY Times Magazine is called Other People’s Snapshots. You can find a
link to it here.
It was the last paragraph fulminated me into deep thought
and inspiration. I knew exactly last night how I was going to illustrate this
blog.
Here is Shapiro’s last paragraph:
The neuroscientist and author David Eagleman has written
that we all die three deaths: “The first
is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned
to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name
is spoken for the last time.” I would say there’s a fourth: the moment the
last remaining picture of you is seen for the final time. These found
photographs not only remind me of this delicate thing we run toward and away
from – time – but they also hold something else. The humbling, steadying truth
that, one day, that’s all we’ll be: a photo.
 |
| My mother, Filomena Cristeta de Irureta Goyena (centre with hands by face) in the Bronx, 1922 |