It is only when tragedy strikes, or in the heat of a crisis, that everything gets stripped away and the people and actions that are really important present themselves to us in brutal clarity. I thought of this when my father got in touch with me last year after ignoring me for thirty years, in his debilitating illness, and wondered then what it was he wanted to know. Why he suddenly wanted to meet me.
And in my mother’s illness I have been scanning in all her work and asking her questions to make sure that I know everything I can about her life. But luckily I have always had a clear vision of what is important to my life, and my mother’s work has always been significant and something of a treasure. I have been immensely fortunate in being brought up with an artist because the world of money never intrudes upon our minds but as a nuisance and never draws us away from feelings being centre stage.
It is as natural for me to live through my loves as for the rain to fall from rain clouds, as important for me to know that it is the nature of love to suffer for in suffering you know it is love, and to long for peace with something approaching reverence whilst understanding it will never come to us.
As Shelley said, some of us bleed from the thorns of life and I have watched one such since I was a child.