ABSTRACT
I met a woman some years ago who, on discovering that she had a serious, spreading cancer, began to visit all the places where she had previously lived. These included the towns and suburbs and the houses and flats of her childhood. She would make her way to those spots and sit in her car or at a place across the road and reflect on her memories of them. I asked her what she meant by this pilgrimage to past places. Some of her motivation, she said, lay in symbolically farewelling parts of her life. But another side of it was the inner contemplation she derived from each trip she made. She could not say, or perhaps would not say, exactly what these thoughts were.
