Rosemary & Niña - 9 December 2020

I my youth in Argentina, where I first I first became aware of death, I had to go next door for a velorio (wake) of our neighbour’s son. My mother in her wisdom wanted me to know about death. I was 8.

After the velorio and the funeral, I am sure that the boy’s parents tried at best to live a normal life in spite of their grief.

My Rosemary died on December 9 2020 and almost every day I get some document addressed to her.

Today I went to ICBC on MacDonald, near my house to enquire about my Cruze’s insurance. I was told to contact my agent. This I did. Because I have a scanner I was able to send him, upon his request, my Rosemary’s death certificate and a phone photograph of my car’s odometer.

With our Blue Cross Health insurance I was able to pay July/August fees (told this was onetime as I had to give them the full number of my Visa) but I had to scan the death certificate and a complicated form. They will call me to find out what my complete Visa number is! The folks at Blue Cross in Burnaby will not be opening their offices to the public until January.

I have cancelled credit cards but kept Rosemary’s American Express card. That card gives us access to nice airport lounges if I ever get to travel again.

I took Rosemary's iPhone to my guy in Richmond and told him to download all of her pictures and put them into a exterior hard drive. I will present the hard drive to my eldest daughter Ale and see what she wants to do with them.

There is not one day that I do not look into our closet or her armoire and find some item that I know I cannot use but that I cannot get rid of.

In spite of all the above, letters keep arriving and I remember stuff I had not thought about but have to do in reference to Rosemary’s death.

Will this ever end?

I wonder how United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld would have handled this? In his lovely autobiographic musings Markings (with a foreword by W. H. Auden and treasured by me since I purchased it in Buenos Aires in 1966) he writes:

If even dying is to be made a social function, then, please, grant me the favour of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.