Scanned 6 May 2024

Age creeps quickly and before you know it, while I walk straight, I am losing my balance lots and I break stuff because I move my arms without looking.

Today I brought down my large tea mug and a dish that had contained a slice of toast. I went to put both into the sink and somehow I hit the dish against the side and it broke.

I knew then that I had to go to my oficina in that moment and write what I am writing now.

My life of 52 years with Rosemary was first recorded on Mocambo Beach in Veracruz sometime in December of 1967, From that moment on this so-called-macho Latin got used to taking orders and suggestions from a woman who was the paragon of stability. She made us come to Vancouver in 1975. She made us buy a house in Kerrisdale in 1986. She made me become interested in gardening then. I could list on and on.

Our lovely Mexican dishes could not be washed in our dishwasher or microwaved (they exploded). So Rosemary suggested we buy the German Villeroy & Boch Switch 3 dishes. When she was alive we would have replaced any broken dish.

Now I realize that after Rosemary died on December 9, 2020, It is of no consequence for me to continue with that stable sense of order that she brought to my existence.

I grieve at today’s broken dish but I will move on knowing the futility of it all.    

A couple of days ago while reading the pay-wall-free lefty Argentine newspaper Página 12, I saw a quote that froze me. It was written by an American writer Louise Glück who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020.

Miramos el mundo solo una vez , en la infancia. El resto es memoria.

We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.

I don’t exactly agree with her entirely. Glück was obviously thinking of the things we first see as children. I would correct and add that there are first things that happen as we progress and age. I look at this photograph of my Rosemary and I, and think that it was a first time. I remember it. But I can add that I especially remember as I have the framed photograph and the colour negative. That first time with Rosemary was then filled with subsequent many first memories that we could share and smile about . That of course all ended when she died.

I now agree with Louise Glück. It is now all memory.