Dear Mike, I am grieved to read this even as I listen to the love of my life play Bach across the room.
From my life, I understand the loss of a wife of many years, and I understand what it is to have a soulmate whose life you cherish above your own. I wish I could meet you in Washington where we could watch the jet trails, like obscure notes from our ghosts, over Puget Sound.
You may remember the day we were planning to meet at the aircraft museum in your neighborhood. You had a medical problem that day, so I photographed aircraft in the hangars on my own. You may not remember, or I may not have told you, that I had driven my wife recently diagnosed with the cancer that would kill her to Seattle to a conference of oncologists. She imagined they could give her information about the latest treatments in the academic language she understood.
We know what is coming for us. It is coming from within or without. It is easier to make peace with our own fate, however, than with what may befall our loved ones first. And yet we are all leaves of grass. This is why I am quoting your beautiful photograph above, because you knew then and you know far more grievously now.
But I also quote it because I have missed seeing your vision in the RFF gallery, and so I invite you to return, if only to explore the grieving with your camera as well as with your words here.
If not yet, keep us in mind; if not ever again, thank you for what your images and friendship have taught me.
