The Virgin seemed to bear a message of Time, with four clocks on a grid radiating from her open palms.

I went back to Recoleta Cemetery last week in search of a ‘better’ shot – perhaps with her projected image a little sharper and ideally shooting out from the very tips of her fingers. But she was having none of it. Nothing looked the same. The reflection of the metal lattice at the window was bleached out and firmly out of reach of the statue’s hands.

I realise, more and more, that what appears to me each time I visit the cemetery is a series of unique and precious moments – there to be grasped, as they will never be repeated in exactly the same way.

The next day, I read the following on Facebook, from The Oral Cancer Foundation: “Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there’s… so much time you can bathe in it, roll around in it, let it slide like coins through your fingers. So much time you can waste it. But for some of us there’s only today. And the truth is, you never really know.”

Everything points to living in the moment.