Writing memoir helps nonagenarian recover
It was writing stories about his globetrotting adventurous career that helped photojournalist Bruce Moss, 98, recover after a stroke.
His memoir, My Favoured Fortune, with 200 pages of text illustrated with dozens of his famous photographs, has just been published, after three years of work.
Moss, who turns 99 in August, recently gave up driving but still lives independently, getting around Stratford on a mobility scooter, regularly making a 25-minute journey to the supermarket.
On December 2, 2019, he was sitting comfortably in a lounge chair, sherry in hand, about to watch the 6pm news, when he realised something was wrong.
“The room began to swirl. Moments later I was sprawled out on the floor with just enough savvy left to activate my emergency alarm.“
“On admission to the emergency department, I was unable to answer basic questions such as my name, age or even the year.”
It turned out he was suffering a transient ischaemic attack, or mini-stroke, caused by a blood clot blocking a blood vessel in his brain, and was fortunate that it was not more serious, he said.
“I was told the situation was by no means dire. There was hope of a modest recovery, it would still be possible for me to hold a restricted driver’s licence, but it would require effort on my part.”
Lying in a bed at Taranaki Base Hospital, he began thinking of the many car trips he’d taken around the country.
“I got my brain working remembering the routes I took, remembering what I ate, then I went through it again the other way round.
“It was a practical solution for people that have had strokes, that all is not lost. Little by little, it came back and the brain started working again.”
He has spent the past three years putting together his memoir, a collection of witty anecdotes from the decades he spent travelling the world as a photojournalist.
“It was written in racy language to appeal to young people in the hope it will inspire them to savour the big world out there awaiting their discovery,” he said. “It’s purely a straightforward account of a bloke who didn’t settle for ‘well, I guess that’s life and I had better get used to it prior to pulling the plug’. It might get others to give it a try.”
Moss grew up in Northland, Wairarapa and Cambridge. As a teenager, his family moved to Inglewood, where his BNZ bank manager father was transferred.
But he got bullied at New Plymouth Boys’ High School, and used to sit on the beach at New Plymouth dreaming of going overseas.
Later, he read a book by a journalist titled How To Travel The World and Get Paid, and headed for Sydney. In 1952, he went to Canada and talked his way into a job at the Vancouver Sun, mixing chemicals in the darkroom, and eventually got to take photos.
Over the next three decades in Canada, Moss saw his work published in the National Geographic, Life, and other famous titles.
He covered the Vietnam War, followed the Queen Mother and other royals on tours, and photographed many rich and famous people.
Eventually, he returned to New Zealand and continued his international freelancing work from a little bach in Northland.
In the early 1990s, he decided to return to Taranaki. “I wanted to be halfway between Auckland and Wellington, and by pure luck I came down through Taumarunui.”
He stopped in Stratford for a coffee, and struck up a conversation with somebody on the main street who told him houses were cheap there. He’s been there ever since.
The serendipity of the chance encounter that led to the move has been with him his whole life, he said. “I’ve been blessed with good fortune for my entire life.”