Rosemary and Niño March 2020

Until my grandmother died in 1970, she was always in my life. I adored her. We shared a sweet tooth. She told everybody that I was an artist just like she was. She often gave me advice that never was of the kind that began with, “Alex, don’t…” it was always, “Alex if you do this, this is what going to happen.” She was most modern in this.

Most of her advice came from the fact that she had thorough knowledge of the Don Quijote plus all the refrains she learned in the 19^th century when she was growing up in Valencia.

The one piece of advice that is always in my mind and especially now is, “El que espera desespera”.  It is difficult to get the lovely ring of alliteration as it does not translate into English. To wait in Spanish is esperar and despair is desesperar. Thus the translation is that if you wait you will despair.

At least 15 years ago I kept telling Rosemary of the initials WTD which are short of Waiting to Die. She kind of agreed with me. Then about 6 years ago when she was not in good health we modified WTD  to PTD or Preparing to Die. I told her that if I went first she was not to install a bench in some park with my memory. A few years before I had written this blog.

We prepared to die by making sure we had an up-to-date will, extra keys for our daughters to open our bank safety deposit box, etc. I even wrote a blog Who will be first?

Rosemary died first on December 9 2020. I am now beginning to keep this thought to myself as my family objects when I tell them that at age 82 I am WTD. But it is most evident that this is what I am doing, as I rot in bed, stare at the ceiling and think of the life I had, but never of the life that I might have in front of me.

My will to keep going is not all that good but it is kept in check by my male cat Niño who has lymphatic cancer of the intestines. He is looking pretty good as I give him a vet-prescribed human cancer pill every other day. We manage to walk around the block when it is not raining or snowing.While I bed rot, he looks at me and I imagine he is telling me, “Alex, don’t die before I do, as who will take care of me and of Niña?”

There is one philosophic conundrum that would be a problem for other people but not for me. Both Rosemary and I believed we would never see each other again.

There is then something wrong when I think, “Alex you are waiting to die so you can join Rosemary in oblivion.”

Were I a tad more optimistic I could explain that esperanza (with that route esperar) is a beautiful word in Spanish for hope. It used to be an old fashioned and wonderful woman's name.  

In my waiting it would seem that I have good company. Niño and I are together in this adventure.

Photograph by Karsten Moran

When one is young one goes to school to get an education. Because my mother sacrificed her financial problems for years to send me to good schools I received a very good education.

What is the situation  then when one is 82 to keep getting an education? I sometimes tell my friends (the remaining few that I have that are still alive) that I am a purveyor of useless facts.

For years I have seen the famous image of a man seen from the back. It was not until I went into the arts section of my daily delivered NYTimes on paper on Friday, February the 7 that the artist in question was Caspar David Friedrich.

Here is the article without a paywall: Caspar David Friedrich

The arts writer Jason Farago writes exquisitely. I flagged the following with my little plastic stickums:

“A stranger I arrived; a stranger I depart”goes the opening of Schubert’s”Winterreise,” and at the end of this beautiful show [the one now at the Met] in late sepia drawings of caves and cemeteries made after Friedrich abandoned painting and lost his fame, this most German of artists depicted the German landscape and an almost alien terrain. I think one of the many reasons the Met’s exhibit feels so timely is just how much of a stranger Friedrich remained in landscape – and how much human longing he located within his rocks and and evergreens. Longing for God. Longing for stranger shores. Longing for death, maybe. I have my own longings now, my nostalgia for nature not yet human-authored, as I wonder through a climate as distant from Greifswald as from Babylon. But we may yet find peace, a measure of it, if we learn to see in the fog.

My mentor Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. once explained to our class in 1958 in Austin,Texas:

Brother Edwin entered our religion class in 1958 and asked the class while pouring water to the brim of a small glass and also that of a big glass, “Which is fuller?” The class answered predictably. Brother Edwin gently corrected us, “Both are equally full as I can not pour more water into either of them without overflowing them. But the bigger glass has more capacity. You need more water to fill it. The small glass can be easily filled. We can say the same about happiness. Some of us can be happy with little others with more. It is more difficult to be happy if you want more. A small happy person and a more-happy person are both equally happy.”
 

So I don’t care if some of my friends think I am a purveyor of useless facts. These newly learned facts enrich my life, whatever is left of it. I see it as pouring some water into an almost empty glass. I will spill into oblivion.

As my Rosemary’s death four years ago recedes, I find myself seeing images of her in my memory, particularly when I turn off the lights before I go to bed, associated with other people who also died.

Recently I have been seeing her in with my mother. Some are images that I can immediately find on my home’s walls. One is not a photograph. My mother in the presence of Rosemary and me breathed in and never breathed out. She died in 1972. This was just one more intimate moment that I shared with Rosemary.

Today it was sunny enough that I took Niño for his walk around the block. I wore my dark blue Filson jacket that I bought in Seattle at the Filson factory with Rosemary in tow. I wrapped my neck with the lovely cashmere scarf Rosemary gave me. And for extra protection I put on the light blue wool gloves that Rosemary gave me not too long ago.

The Cashmere Scarf

When I arrived home I was missing one of the gloves. I looked everywhere. Perhaps it was in the kitchen where I went immediately to feed Niño. It was not there.

My mother and Rosemary had this marked obsession that when they lost something they would backtrack. I did just that. Halfway through the route I took with Niño I found the glove.

I cannot speak for others but the possessions that I have that were given to me by someone I loved, have this extra quality of somehow the person who gave me the gloves is in those gloves. Part of their soul/spirit remains.

When I found the glove, immediately in my mind, I saw Rosemary smiling.

My mother, too.

In March 1, 1970, the front page of the New York Times reported that then-Nixon administration adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan had advised that the issue of race in the United States “could benefit from a period of ‘benign neglect.’” Years of racially inspired violence and polemics had “created opportunities for martyrdom, heroics, histrionics, or whatever,” and Moynihan advised that the U.S. government’s focus on racial problems actually helped stoke them.

These days of my bed rotting with my two warm and cuddly felines, Niño and Niña, I think about my past and how because of my advanced age I have lost most of it and what remains is a distant memory.

I remember adoring my maternal grandmother (the only grandparent I ever had as all the others were dead) until she died in 1970. She educated me with refrains from the Don Quijote de la Mancha. She would save me from chinelazos (whippings from my mother using Filipino slippers) saying to her that she had to be more understanding as I was an artist like the one my grandmother was.

It seems that the idea of a family has thinned out in this century. I do remember that in our family dinners on Springer Avenue in Burnaby in the late 70s there seemed to be lots of conflict. We actually fought at the table! So in spite of rosy memories from the past they  were not all that rosy all the time.

Before Rosemary died on December 9 2020 there were at least two important family dinners in our home either in Kerrisdale or in Kitsilano. One was at Canadian Thanksgiving and the other at Christmas Eve. I would buy a large roast beef that I would singe in the barbecue and then place in our oven with the necessary vegetables. I was in charge of making the gravy from the drippings and Rosemary would make her glorious Yorkshire Pudding.

That all ended with Rosemary’s death. It was also after her death that my two granddaughters started not visiting me until the the visits stopped as did the, ¿Cómo estás Papi?” They never phone.

The only (only with emphasis) family dinner is now once-a-year on Christmas Day and it is a bit forced as the family of wife, husband and two granddaughters, and a mother-in-law seems like an event I do not look forward to. But my eldest daughter from Lillooet does manage to come.

I wonder what would have happened if my wife had been the survivor and not me. Would she get more input in visits? Could it be that they see this man as being more self-sufficient? Or do they see me as an old man who is no longer useful?

I miss the stability that my Rosemary represented. She was the one who wore the pants in our family. She knew how to do finances and how to mediate with family squabbles. I could always count on her to listen.

I cannot complain about my finances as both my daughters deal with the complex items of my taxes and my banking. My youngest daughter who is a wellness expert takes care of morning pills.

But all that does not compensate that I miss that family warmth that I had until 4 years ago.

I find that the only person who would understand all the above is my Rosemary.

Benign neglect it is.

Ned Pratt

In that last 20th century I photographed quite a few architects. These were Arthur Erickson, Bing Thom, Ron Thom, Geoffrey Massey, Ned Pratt and Abraham Rogatnick. They are all now dead.

Because I photographed them many times, they became my friends.

Bing Thom

The exception was Ron Thom. He was a somber and depressed man when I photographed him for the first and last time. He died shortly after.

I soon discovered that our city architects were renaissance men. You could talk to them on any subject. Abraham Rogatnick, who never built anything, except a ramp to leave his house on his wheel chair a few months before he died, would join us for our Christmas Eve dinners. He befriended our two granddaughters. He made origami birds for our Christmas tree.

Ron Thom

In my present isolation in my little Kits home usually on my bed with my two cats, I reminisce how lucky I was to having met these men. I believe that I am a better man because of them.

Few now understand that when a photographer had access to architects they would sometimes tell me stuff they did not tell writers. I asked Erickson why he had built his little house out of a garage seeing he could have lived anywhere else and had a view of the mountains. He told me,"Alex, I did not want to live with a view assembled by God. I wanted to grow my own garden and view what was mine and hot His."

Arthur Erickson

Abraham Rogatnick

Geoffrey Massey