31 December 2022

On December 9 2022 I wrote my last blog. It was about then that my Blogger/Google blog was censored by an AI algorithm. One of the censored blogs featured lovely panoramic photographs of the Vancouver Chinese Garden and it had no people.  In all about four were censored with warnings and one was deleted.

I felt violated knowing that at any moment what seemed to be a random occurrence could happen again. I am now having my blog migrated to WordPress. Unfortunately there is one problem that has no resolution. Many of my blogs have hundreds of links to other blogs or web pages. When the blog is migrated I have to keep my Blogger going as those links will only open as Blogger links.

Since my Rosemary died on 9 December 2020 I can assert here that my grief has not diminished. If anything, her absent presence is more in my mind all day and night.

Somehow I sort of imposed on myself a writer’s block and only now do I feel I must continue. My mantra in these last few months has been Joan Didion:

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

I have come to realize that by not writing and expressing my feelings and thoughts about Rosemary that it has been worse for me.

Luckily, while my eldest daughter Alex is far in difficult-to-reach Lilloet, I have a smiling younger daughter Hilary I see once or twice a week. And I am lucky, too, in the shared companionship of my brother and sister cats, Niño and Niña. They lie on me on the bed and I find that I have little desire to get up to write or to deal with the other unimportant menialities of my daily life.

Today was especially tough in an almost funny way. I had a terrible time finding decent green grapes. There is a Latin American custom of eating twelve grapes as the clock rings in the New Year.  Some say that in 1906 Spain there was an overabundance of green grapes and an enterprising Spaniard dictated that eating green grapes (not of other colours) brought special good luck.

Rosemary loved grapes and she always made sure we had them for our New Year’s Eve.

Tonight I will eat 24 of them. Why?

As Christ said in Saint Luke’s Gospel, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

All day, in every way, those words are in my mind.