Rosa 'Susan Williams- Ellis' 22 November 2022

This blog while I have written it today as per the date of the rose scan, I will insert in the past weeks to fill some holes.

 On November 20, 2016 I wrote this blog (link below) about a lovely woman I knew who died as they say ‘suddenly’. I combined her photograph with a Jorge Luís Borges poem called A Rose and Milton.

Blanca Rosa del Jardín Borrado - Jorge Luís Borges

Now I find myself citing that poem again which I will place below in both Spanish and English.

The rose in my scan is an English Rose, Rosa ‘Susan Williams-Ellis’ and which I once thought, that because it was white, that it would be delicate. That is not the case. There is one bud left after I cut these two so she will be the absolute last rose of the season.

As my roses bid me goodbye until next year I wonder if I will be around (alive) to enjoy them all over again.

Of late I have been thinking about the people from my past that died. In most cases they are remote deaths in which time might have healed part of that grief. My Rosemary and I watched my mother die in 1972 and for me that was one of the many bonds I had with Rosemary.

What is curious now is that with Rosemary’s death I find that those remote deaths, my father, mother, mentors and friends, not to be remote anymore. They are fresh almost as if Rosemary has tugged them to my present and said, “Here we are.” Am I being beckoned to join the party?

These two little white (and very tough) buds give me the hope that I will not be joining that party too soon and I will be around to enjoy them and remember how Rosemary (my best rose) so loved them.