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| Filomena Cristeta de Irureta Goyena Hayward - Rosemary Elizabeth Healey Watehouse-Hayward |
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| My mother, Rosemary and Alexandra - Veracruz 1969 |
I believe that thought, at old age, (I am82) keeps my head marbles in action. While I sometimes feel guilty about not reading as much I know that Pre-Socratic philosophers and Socrates himself had no books to read. They thought.
Thanks to Bill Richardson’s concept of Bunny Watson in that disparate themes or ideas might have things in common and my belief that our ability to associate is what makes us human, of late I have come to and important conclusion - When I married my Rosemary I married my mother.
Besides the fact that my mother and Rosemary adored each other there is another salient link.
My mother was given the nickname of Sarah Bernhardt because she was always over acting (so we thought) her physical ills. And so it was that in 1971 my mother was in bed in our Arboledas, Estado the México home in the presence of Rosemary and me. She told us, “This time I am really going to die.” She did. We heard her breathe in and then not breathe out.
There is an important comparative link with Rosemary in that sometime late afternoon of December 9, 2020 Rosemary in our bed asked, “Am I dying?”
Both women were in a position that we who are alive cannot comprehend. We might die vaporized in an airplane crash or of a heart attack in our sleep in the middle of the night, but we cannot understand what it is to know when your death is imminent.
So much about how my mother and Rosemary had equivalent deaths.
My mother sacrificed her puny teaching salary, as a single mother, to educate me. She sent me to an expensive boarding Roman Catholic high school in Austin and paid for many of my university failures. She financed the purchase of Rosemary’s and my house in Arboledas. My mother stayed with us for two years until she died.
Looking back at this, I now understand that Rosemary made many financial sacrifices so that this former macho could buy a couple of terrible Fiat X-19s and one even worse Maserati Biturbo. She said, “Yes” to all my requests to buy expensive photographic equipment. She did not complain when in the late 90s I had many gallery shows with expensive matting and framing.
Just like my mother sacrificed for me, Rosemary did the same in our two daughters’ education and educational trips to Europe and South America. With our two granddaughters Rosemary spared no expense to put them in ballet classes, piano and violin classes and had them accompany us in trips abroad.
My mother used to tell me that loving was doing. I can now assert that Rosemary would have agreed.
