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| 13 May 2013 |
In 1972 I took my Mexico City high school class to a performance of Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. My teenage students were quite impressed. The idea of having a string orchestra with a conductor (the first violinist) and a woodwind orchestra (with the main conductor) and trumpet player playing on his own, all at the same time, was novel to them and also to me.
I heard that composition which was first composed in 1908, once again in 2009 and I wrote about it here (link below). Since then I have written quite a few blogs with that theme which are not all musical.
The Unanswered Question at the Telus Theatre
The Unanswered Question Never Asked
Of late, as I struggle to live a life without my Rosemary, I have this salient melancholic obsession with the fact that 6 minutes before she died on December 9, 2020 she asked, “Am I dying?” I could not answer.
I shared this moment with my friend Alan Jacques who last June took the MAID exit. He invited me to talk about his choice a few weeks before. We talked about death for more than two hours. He commented that he was jealous of my Rosemary in that she knew she was dying. He would be put to sleep so he would not experience that letting go. That comment by Jacques has been in my mind since then. One cannot live that moment that Rosemary had unless one is also dying in bed and not suddenly in an accident or heart attack.
That third question, the one that was answered happened a few years after May 18, 2013 when I wrote a blog with the question “Who Will Be First?”
To this day I keep thinking that her only problem, with me dead, would have been to open cans and jars. She would have experienced the same solace I have living with two loving brother and sister cats.
