10 September 2026

Because I was married to my Rosemary for 52 years, I miss an intimacy that I can never possess again. From making a bed, that we would then sleep, I have perceived many more. A few days ago I wrote a blog that involved a famous (and controversial) painting by Alex Colville called The Refrigerator. We often walked around with nothing on.

Alex Colville's Refrigerator

There was an intimacy that we shared for many years that many would say was unhealthy (unclean?). We liked to take tub baths together. We would be in opposite sides and our toes would happily do stuff.

But intimacy does not have to be only sexual. When we talked she often finished the sentences I began. I now miss being able to talk to a woman (not any of my male friends) about stuff like what me might need to buy at the supermarket or what we might want to cook for our evening meal. I miss walking around the block holding hands. I miss going to buy shoes with her. She often bought the shoes I liked. To this day those shoes are in my bedroom closet. The Swedes will have to come when I am dead to take them away. Something of Rosemary is in those shoes.

For 25 years we had breakfast in bed (with our cats). Breakfast came with the Vancouver Sun and the NYTimes. We would talk of our plans for the day.

Now I feel like a boat that is rudderless. Luckily, my female cat Niña, demands her daily routine of being fed, let out on the deck, and especially hearing the noise of my filling her two water dishes (one in the kitchen that other in the bathroom next to my room). As soon as it is 8pm, she stares at me. I open Rosemary’s armoire (she knows of the noise it makes) and I pull out and place in my hand some of her treats. After that she expects me to take a bath and get into bed to read. She immediately gets on top of me.

Often I can hear when I make the bed in the morning, “Alex, make the bed neat for the cats,” or “Alex the kitty litter has to be changed.”

While all this is happening, I keep looking at Rosemary’s framed portrait (the one here) and that Bougainvillea glabra that grows on a table by her armoire. Today it had some flowers and I knew I had to write about her favourite house plant (in Mexico City it grew in our little garden as it was warm enough).

That she planted it in the pot it is in, gives me that feeling of knowing that something of Rosemary is in that plant.

But the one special intimacy that I share with Niña is that when both Rosemary and Niño were alive (my male cat Niño died on May 12), she was her cat while Niño was mine. To stroke Niña, knowing that at one time that was Rosemary’s pleasure, is exquisitely melancholic. I talk to Niña and call her Niña muchi (a sort of Mexican endearment word). I say, “Do you remember Rosemary?” Or, I might say, “¿Te acuerdas de Mamuchi?

But the most tragic intimacy we share is that when Rosemary was dead on our bed on 9 December 2020 we (two daughters and two granddaughters and I ) were waiting downstairs in the living room for the funeral people to come and take Rosemary away. As I was thinking about it all, I knew that because I was and am a photographer, I had to do something. I had to take a photograph. I went upstairs, and there, was my Rosemary, dead with Niña sleeping on her chest. I took the photograph and it is permanently imbedded in my memory. I will never show it to anybody.

It is much too intimate.

Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 11 September 2026

Cats, babies and roses never perform on demand. To me that is a most accurate statement.

Luckily I was never in the business of taking portraits of families and dealing with crying babies. Just taking portraits of my own was enough. My daughters, and especially my granddaughters, knew I would never ask them to smile.

My female cat Niña imposes on me her daily routine. I have to perform to her demands.

For most situations when I use my Fuji X-E3 it will do what It is supposed to do. But there are times when it will not. This is called resistentialism. That is an inanimate object declaring to me that it has free will and will do as it pleases.

This scan of my best late season rose, surprised me with a large beautiful bloom. But the other little one kind of tells me, “So there Alex, I am small today so take it.”

Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’ does perform without any of my requests and have unusually  bright red new growth that I marvel when I see it.

I know that if I showed the scan to Rosemary she would smile without me doing anything.

Rosemary always performed. But sometimes when I looked at her I could not tell what she was thinking.  My Rosemary, we were married for 52 years, was an enigma who would surprise me on every turn every day.

My baby, my Rosemary perhaps was also a cat.

When Rosemary and I moved from our large Kerrisdale home with its corner garden to our (now my) present little house in Kerrisdale, many homes were being torn down on our Athlone street and beyond. There were large metal containers that builders were using to tear down and to then build. One particular day, a sad one in my memory, I loaded my Malibu with many books (thousands) and I would throw them into the bins and say goodbye. Since I might have had 5000 books at that time all of them would not have been able to go to the Kits home. I now may have around 3000.

In these last few days I have been enjoying two books by Ian Rankin. I had not read one of the older ones. A Heart Full of Headstones is Rankin’s latest from 2022. At the end of the novel a retired Inspector John Rebus is declared guilty for murder. Could this be Rankin’s last Rebus novel? 

That made me think as I do not remember all the previous Rebus novels I read so many years.

I believe that every individual’s life is like a jar. When one is born the jar is empty. As one progresses in life the jar fills up little by little. Upon death the jar’s lid is screwed shut. I was shocked when I finished Julian Barnes' latest Departure (s) that he states that he is 80 and that it will be his last book.

This jar that I am has the content of all those books I read, of all the people I met and loved, of all the dogs and cats I had and we had, of cars purchased and sold, of children (two) born and raised, of two granddaughters loved, of sad moments and witnessing my mother die with Rosemary present and then watching Rosemary die (who 6 minutes before she died she asked, “Am I dying?”, of living in Argentina, Mexico and now Vancouver, of noticing my Rosemary for the first time from the back (those legs!) on December 15, 1967, of the many people I photographed, of the moments listening to tapes and records, of going to baroque and avant-garde concerts, of going with Rosemary many times to Buenos Aires, of going with her to Mexico, Venice, Florence, of going with her and our daughters to Spain, of obsessively taking photographs of Toledo from the very spot El Greco painted his famous scene of the city, of walking with Rosemary around the block with our male cat Niño in tow, of doing just that but without Rosemary once she had died and I could go on ad infinitum.

I am 84 and I believe there is not much room left in my jar.

Pacific 1967

Living in Canada since 1975 I soon became enamored with Canadian art. This includes Thom Thompson and The Group of Seven he inspired, Emily Carr (especially her pencil drawings) and Alex Colville. I had the pleasure to photograph Colville at the Rennaissance Hotel on October 15, 1995. I have written of my favourite painting Pacific 1967. Recently I discovered his awfully controversial The Refrigerator. I immediately knew I could write a blog connecting with my own experience with fridges.

In  Argentina a fridge is an “heladera”. In Mexico is it is a “refrigerador”.

Now in my Kitsilano home I experience my extreme dyslexia. When I want to reheat my tea mug in the microwave I often open the fridge door. My fridge door is excellent but it does not have that feature of magnetic door. Many of my Polaroids often ended on our Kerrisdale fridge door.

Rosa 'Robin Hood' - 6 September 2026

Rosa 'Robin Hood' is a reliable, repeat-blooming hybrid musk shrub rose bred by Reverend J.H. Pemberton before 1927.

Today, September 6, 2026 I have one bloom of my reliable Rosa  A Shropshire Lad’ in my back lane garden. I notice another, Rosa ‘Robin Hood’. This rose brings me many memories, some involving my father and another, my going to Nottingham in 2006.

In these pages I cannot stop writing on how I miss my Rosemary who died   6 years ago on 9 December 2020. It is impossible for me to look at this rose a hybrid musk rose without thinking of all the others hybridized by the Reverend J.H. Pemberton. Rosemary would have smiled had I showed her this scan or brought her to the lane garden to gaze on this little rose.

I am now 84 and it is impossible for me to explain that in a life without obligations except to feed myself and my female cat Niña, that thought in my head are all about the fact that I am waiting for my inevitable oblivion.

People, including my two daughters tell me thought stoppers, “Papi you have to find distractions to keep you busy.”

But I lie on my bed with my cuddly Niña and I feel I am in a doctor’s waiting room (I do have some magazines to read) expecting to be called in any minute.

Because I lived in Mexico for many years and with my Rosemary for 8 years the thoughts of death are familiar to anybody who has ever gone there.

One of my concerns is that I am surrounded by many mementos on the walls, my bed, framed portraits of Rosemary, my daughters, granddaughters and family. Most of these portraits stare at me without smiles. Any one of them, all, if I might say, are superb portraits. None are snapshots. I am unable to escape any of them or look at them without being transported to moments before I pressed the shutter of my camera.

When we lived in Kerrisdale, one day, Rosemary and I drove away to visit our Lillooet daughter, Alexandra. I told Rosemary, “Perhaps we might hire an arsonist to burn our house down while we are away.” Her answer, “That is not a bad idea. All would be gone and we could begin again without any tactile memories.”

But I remember what my abuelita told me, “Niños que juegan con fuego se mean en la cama.” Or “Children who play with fire piss in bed.”