Loss can be heart wrenching. I suffer one almost every day. Consider the three photographs I took in Arboledas, Estado de México around 1972. I found my colour negative and scanned it properly. Rosemary’s I cannot find and the versions here are from a blog.

At one point do you tell yourself that finding something is not so important anymore?

I look at these two photographs and I note the simplicity in them.These photographs contain items we still have. The chair, the hexagonal white lit table (which I made) plus the fireplace tools are now at Alexandra’s home in Lillooet. The red pot with the fern has a plant now in my guest room. The hanging chair is hanging in a corner of my Kits living room.

But I always go back to the thought that when I did these photographs there was no idea in me of the importance of the moment and that I would see 50 years later.

There is a simplicity here of fewer possessions and a life that had the comforting routine of both of us driving in our VW to teach English at some American company while our live in housekeeper took care of Alexandra and Hilary.

The comforting routine was so because we had a purpose which was to make money so we could raise our two daughters. It is now difficult for me to find the order or routine and purpose.

Now, looking back, and staring at a version of myself so long ago, it would seem that those 50 years are no different in how they started and finished when compared to the week that has ziped by.

It was Einstein who said that in order to note movement you had to be outside that movement. Is my present life in a moving train while I look at my past in a train going in the opposite direction outside my window?

My grief for the loss of my mother in that 1972 has dissipated with time. I know that I will not have that lessening in the grief for the loss of my Rosemary.

My  only hope is oblivion.