Saturday, April 26, 2025

Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena circa 1908 - Manila

 

 Luto is Spanish for mourning. The word comes from the Latin luctus which means mourning.

 Of late the mounting evidence is that most of the people I ever worked with and my family are all dead. When I bike every day in the nice weather at my age 82 I don’t think I am an exception. I believe I will die soon (statistically).

Waiting to die is not as much and angst producing fear as watching those around me disappear into oblivion.

At this moment a relative who lives in North Vancouver told me yesterday, “I am like Rosemary. I have cancer and I will die in two months.” A photographer friend of mine has signed up to MAID and will die in mid-June.

All this death had me thinking about death in that last century. There was no social media so you could not write, “My grandfather would have been 150 years old today. I miss him.”  Death, while feared, was shown respect.

Embedded in my memory are the many photographs of my grandfather, Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena where he is wearing a mourning band. In my box of less valuable family jewels (most are at my bank) there is this lovely mourning bracelet jewel that my grandmother often wore and then my mother when my abuelita (her mother) died.

There is something beautiful in a jewel that was made to order for one precise purpose. It signified that someone in your family had died.

I cannot wear it as my hand does not fit through it. I wonder as my life is cutting short if anybody in my family will understand its purposeful beauty.

 

 

Friday, April 25, 2025

 

24 April 2025 - Fuji X-E1 & Lensbaby

 

My grandmother (I called her Abue) had an uncanny talent of knowing when to move.

Sometime around 1921 she became a widow in Manila. She had three children, one was to be my mother. She told me many years later, that although she had a magnificent coloratura soprano voice, she could not sing opera in the Philippines for a living. Only prostitutes did that in those years. She picked up sticks and moved the whole family to the Bronx.

As a little boy she would tell me that on the way to New York their Japanese ship arrived at a port in a city that had trees and mountains. She would pronounce the name “Vancooover”. For years every time I happen to go into what was the CP Train Station at the foot of Granville I sit on a bench and imagine them walking across to take the train to Montreal.

As she noticed the market fluctuations in the US in beginning of 1929, my Abue and family moved back to the Philippines.

In 1936 she felt the winds of war in the East, so they moved to Buenos Aires. In the early 50s when Perón started burning churches, my grandmother knew it was time to move. We moved to Mexico City in 1953.

My Abue died in Veracruz 1970. She had dementia but she did meet my Rosemary.

In 1975 Rosemary informed that she did not think that Mexico City was a good place for our two daughters, Alexandra and Hilary to grow up in. We were to move in our VW Beetle to Vancouver, British Columbia.

In 1986 I was informed by my director of operations that she was tired of having a little garden in our Burnaby townhouse. We were to move to a splendid corner garden house in Kerrisdale.

It was 7 years ago where I (yes me!) informed Rosemary that we were going to move out of Kerrisdale and sell the house for good money and move to Kitsilano. Thanks to Rosemary’s financial acumen and the selling of that Kerrisdale property I do not worry know about making ends meet.

I think a lot on how Rosemary “inherited” from my grandmother the foresight for moving and from my mother, her beautiful legs.

These warmer spring days in Kitsilano I have been biking every day to Point Grey Road. I have been taking my Fuji X-E1 with its Lensbaby. As I bike on all those safe bike lanes and marvel at all those little parks by the water, I salute my Rosemary for her talent for moving.

 

 

Thursday, April 24, 2025

Rosa sericea ssp. omeiensis f. pteracantha - 24 April 2025

 

 

The members of the Vancouver Rose Society (I am a member and we call ourselves rosarians but we do not have secret handshakes) compete every year in being able to announce the first bloom of the season. I have lost as someone in sunnier Victoria has claimed credit a week ago,

So this blog announcing my first bloom will not interest most of my fellow rosarians. But there is a proviso as I may be the only member of the society with a species rose that besides having a long and complicated name is the only rose with four petals. Species roses have five.

But there is a bit of good news that might interest a few and that is that on Easter Sunday at Mandeville I found a very healthy Rosa ‘Double Delight’. It is not an easy hybrid tea rose to grow. Somehow when we moved from our Kerrisdale garden 7 years ago to Kitsilano it either died or got lost in the move.

Double Delight of Raspberry Flummery

Few of the younger members of the VRS will know that in the 90s this rose won many awards at the VanDusen Floral Hall for its exquisite perfume.

There is this link (above) to one of my blogs where I mention its connection to raspberry flummery.

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

 

With Rosemary in my mind telling me, “Alex, we have to get the garden to look nice as people are going to start coming and we have the Vancouver Rose Society open garden sometime in June,” I worked all day.

As I was neating it all up, I noticed Rosemary’s garden cushion she used when she got on her knees (often) and particularly when she cut the grass by the flower beds with her scissors. I decided to put it into the wash. It came out like new. And today I did edge my laneway garden bed with scissors.

I have a couple of jeans faded at the knees that I use when I garden. I have offered my Lillooet daughter Alexandra her mother’s cushion. I am sure she will take it.

In my kitchen drawer I have five of Rosemary’s scissors. She used them in the garden, to cut chicken before cooking it, pizza, and for just about anything else.

It was in Mexico where I first heard from Rosemary that pants could be a pant and scissors a scissor.

Until Ale comes for a visit I will lovingly look at Rosemary’s cushion and think back of her daintily kneeling in the garden with one of our cats on her side.

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

 

LOS MEJORES AMIGOS - ISABEL BONO (In English below)

 Tengo amigos

a los que nunca he preguntado nada,

de los que me gustaría

conocer cada minuto de su infancia

a qué jugaban

si les dolía perder

si se arrancaban las costras de las heridas

si sentían miedo

si ya lo perdieron

 

pero yo no pregunto

 

me gustaría haber estado allí

en cada infancia de cada amigo,

haber sudado con ellos

 

eso ya no es posible

como no lo será sudar sus muertes

 

mis amigos morirán lejos

y yo no sabré a quién preguntar

 

The Best Friends – Isabel Bono

 

I have friends

to whom I have never asked anything

friends I would like to know

about every minute of their childhood

what did they play

did it hurt them to lose

did they scratch off their scabs

where they afraid

or no longer afraid

 

but I don’t ask

 

I would have liked to have been there.

 

In each of my friends’childhoods

to have sweated with them

that is no longer possible

as it will not to sweat their deaths

 

my friends will die far away

and I will no longer know whom to ask.

My translation  

The above poem by a Spanish poet born in Málaga in1964 is of a poet I did not know anything about except that the above poem appeared in m Twitter/X feed. Their algorithm is right on the money for my literary tastes.