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| 23 March 2021 |
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To have on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
From Bob Dylan’s lyrics to Like a Rolling Ston e
In the middle of last night for reasons that escape me and particularly as my memory for lyrics is not good this went through my thought process:
To be on your own, with no direction home
For me this means that right now I am floating about on the sea on a boat with no rudder. I don’t know where I am or where I am going.
My two daughters want to make my leaving this world a seamless one. I am instructed to deal with my life insurance policy (my Rosemary would have been the one to inherit $75,000). Because of the amount of stuff in my little Kitsilano duplex I have told my daughters that when I die the house should be left as is for a while. It could be a pied-à-terre for either of my granddaughters or if my Eldest, Alexandra may want to leave Lillooet.
I am busy storing photo files from my computer into external drives. It is difficult to throw away years of birthday cake negatives.
It doesn’t take too much for me to realize that with no plan to get a job, to get a phone call offering me one or anything else, I am simply living that Dylan tune Like a Rolling Stone. I am losing my desire to go to dance, music and theatre performances. So many of them I shared with Rosemary.
Yes I am going for 10 days to Buenos Aires, yes I will be driving alone to New Dublin, Ontario in March (where Rosemary was raised) and yes I will be going to Minneapolis in June to present Beautiful Hosta Flowers & their Companions to the American Hosta Society Convention there. But these are simply distractions that do not hide that I am really waiting for my terminal date with life.
Recently I wrote to a favourite 24 year old niece in Buenos Aires:
Sabrás que Piazzolla escribío una hermosa composición llamada Oblivion. Le puso ese nombre en inglés porque sabía que la palabra no tiene traducción exacta al castellano. Olvido no es oblivion. Y otro sinónimo en inglés, muy Sartre, es nothingness.
Cuando estaba a punto de morir Rosemary nos preguntó,"Am I dying?" No tengo memoria si contestamos.
¿A qué estado durante el sufrimiento pierde uno las ganas de vivir? Existe un protocolo que nos impide preguntarle a la persona si en efecto quiere morir. Pienso mucho (pero no tengo en este momento las ganas de suicidarme) que si me muero ya no pensaré la falta de la presencia de mi Rosemary. Ella y yo sabíamos que no nos veríamos más.
Cada día, durante las complicaciones de este siglo, la idea de un oblivion de Piazzolla se me hace más de mi agrado.
And in English that is:
You might know that Piazzolla wrote a lovely composition called Oblivion. He gave it that name in English because there is no accurate one-word translation to Spanish. To forget, olvido, does not do it and that other synonym nothingness does not exist in Spanish either.
When Rosemary was about to die she asked us, “Am I dying?” I have no memory if we (two daughters and older granddaughter Rebecca) answered her.
I wonder at what point in one’s suffering does one lose one’s will to live? There seems to be a protocol which prevents us from asking a person if they want to die. I think a lot about this (but I have no present plans for suicide) and that if I die I will no longer think about the absent presence of my Rosemary. She and I believed we would never see each other again.
Each day with the complexity of this century the idea of a Piazzolla oblivion becomes much more to my liking.
