I have not navigated the mysteries of life, its passages, corridors and byways alone. I have much to be grateful for. That my destiny has been linked to that of another. Although he is hardly 'another' in a deep sense of our communion as life's shared partnership. We have spent most of our lives with one another, comforting and guiding, searching and enjoying, mutually ministering and celebrating and mourning together.

I am, to this day, amazed at the breadth of his interest in all manner of concerns, and his ability to master so many of the creative arts that make life so pleasurable and beautiful. We both have a deep appreciation of the arts, although it is he who is capable of producing his very own beauty, and it is left to me to admire his aesthetic creations.

We have, together, for over 60 years, shared a delight in the artistic and creative work left by their originators for others following them in time and orientation to treasure. I'm not certain, however whether it would enhance our lives or create another kind of inherited misery for us to know the details of the lives of those who have passed before us, leaving us the legacy of their art.

There is that air of mystique, where one cannot but wonder - at the passage of time, at the messages, oblique and imagined, that others have left for us to ponder.