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| 29 May 2025 |
The song by Violeta Parra, Gracias a la Vida is one that Rosemary and I first heard in Mexico City in a radio station that featured Latin-American folk songs. I used the title in a series of photographs that I took of my granddaughter Rebecca with her ballet teacher Andrea Hodge.
Now at 82 in the footsteps of a statistically soon-to-happen oblivion I find myself calling people I have not heard from for many years. My intention is one that I like to call “tying up loose ends”.
The photograph illustrating this blog which I recently shot with my Fuji X-E1 equipped with a Lensbaby (thank you Jeff Gin) made me realize how lucky I was to have met my Rosemary in Mexico City in 1967. She had that rare vision of knowing where one was to live and she made us (our two daughters) move to Vancouver in 1975.
It was in Vancouver where:
1. I learned to be a good photographer.
2. We educated our daughters in Maillardville so that they could learn French.
3. Rosemary made us move to a large house with a corner garden in Kerrisdale.
4. She strongly persuaded me to become a gardener like her.
5. She made excellent financial decisions so I now live in Kitsilano with no money worries.
6. If I became a good portrait photographer is all to the fact that Rosemary never told me not to buy equipment I needed and she especially taught me how to photograph hands.
7. She promoted our travel and in particularly with our two granddaughters. Perhaps in a the future they just might appreciate what Rosemary did for them.
8. I have a few illnesses and each of my every two weeks arthritis pen costs $800. Canada and my BlueCross pay for it. I believe I could not live anywhere else without that medicine.
9. There is a stability in this country and in Vancouver (except for the Vancouver mantra “expect delays” that really is not to be found anywhere else.
10. That view of our city that I took on 29 May is proof that Rosemary was always right.
I will always be thankful to my life and to what Rosemary did with it.
