Passage of Life

This is what I wrote five years ago in this blog:

Quebec City, summer of seventy four, my first camera and first wife. A small room in a provincial town with wonderful light streaming in from the outside. One never thought of preserving memory, it was all about photographing, not keeping records. But in the end that's what happens. It is a record kept for thirty odd years, of a time inexorably lost.
I must be thankful for the negatives so well preserved. There would be no memory without them.
I must confess, on the other hand, that, having given the image a tinted look it makes it speak of another era, and it can only mean that my mental association with the place evoke visuals bathed on that ineffable sepia glow...


This is what I wrote today:

Five years ago, going through my old prints, I found this image of my first wife, Margaret Thurlow. It recalled pointedly those early years of my life as an immigrant in Canada, my attempts at being a man in love with photography and the very first vacation that I had ever taken as an adult.
It was a wonderful time, with wife on board and the fantasy at hand to do whatever came to mind while free of duties and a camera nearby.
A few months ago I received the sad news that Margaret had passed away, in Santa Cruz, California, and of course the dark clouds of reality started to gather over my head. Age and the diminishing probabilities to do what needs to be done before our turn at the head of the queue all came cascading forth. So it goes.
These few sentences and the accompanying portrait should suffice to pay homage to the  woman who taught me photography and was a very good human being all of her life.