While I try to keep my oficina tidy it is very difficult during the plant scanning season. There are rose petals and leaves all over the floor. I sometimes bring in my vacuum cleaner. Thankfully I haven’t in a while. By my shoes in the foot well of my desk I found a single negative. It must have fallen from the negative sleeve a few weeks ago when I was putting some order to my family negatives. In particular I was putting my first nude photographs (of Rosemary) taken in 1969 in chronological order. The Kodak Tri-X neg I found had the numbers 11a 12.

It is a good photograph? Would I have missed it as I did not know I had lost it? There is still something wonderful (exciting) and intimate in scanning a portrait of my Rosemary taken so long ago. I have placed the straight scan here and then one where I used Photoshop to bring out (the detail was there) the highlights in her eyes. I am unable to convince my peers that inkjet prints from a good scan will outdo anything I could have done in my darkroom. The enlarger had limitations in bringing out shadow detail that was always there. Note the yellow cast of the unfixed negative. Time did take its toll or I simply did not wash it well when I processed it.

I have no exact date on when I took those nude photographs of Rosemary. But I have a very good memory of other dates. We were married February 8, 1968. There is another date indelible in my memory.  December 9, 2020 is when Rosemary died about 6 minutes after she asked, “Am I dying?”

That date is now increasingly more in my mind as I believe that my family fragmented then. I do see my youngest daughter about once a week. We go to the movies. But this year she never came to my open rose garden nor any time after. My two granddaughters have disappeared,

My eldest daughter came from Lillooet this past Sunday and both daughters and I had father’s day dinner at the Italian Cultural Centre. I have not heard from them since - not even a phone call.

I wonder if I had been the dead father and my Rosemary were the one alive would they have visited her at home?  Could it be that they believe I am more independent?

At the very least I now have the comfort of my two cats. They need me as much as I need them.

With them around I am not quite obsolete, redundant, retired or inconsequential. My cats are my family.