In Spanish we have a lovely word ánima which is a synonym for soul. In English we have animate which agrees with the definition of ánima in my on-line dictionary of the Real Academia (RAE)

Del lat. anĭma; cf. gr. ἄνεμος ánemos 'soplo'.

It seems that the Latin root ánemos means soplo or to blow. Thus to animate is to blow life into something.

This concept explains why we, or at least this 80 year old man, finds himself attached to objects which are supposed to be inanimate.

Since my Rosemary died on 9 December 2020 I have been slowly discarding (nasty word) some of her stuff in a dresser in our bedroom. A few days ago I found (inevitable as she was obsessed with them) a couple of scissors. I also found and I smiled at finding her pencil sharpener. My youngest daughter Hilary reminded me when I told her of the sharpener, “Abi love to write everything in pencil and if the eraser at the end did not work she would throw the pencil away." This is why there are pencils all over the house and not to mention scissors.

In the kitchen until recently there was a little terracotta pot full of her pencils and our plant marker pens. The pencils were either unsharpened or had never been used.

This frustrated me a tad. Since we left our Kerrisdale home 6 years ago and its most important darkroom I have adopted and begun to accept and enjoy my inkjet prints. I have brought an Ansel Adams custom to them. I sign them in the back with pencil to indicate, as Adams who did the same, that I have personally printed the inkjet and not some lab.

Now that I have found Rosemary’s sharpener I am content in having sharp pencils.

I can only add here that those pencils, the sharpeners and the two scissors have something of Rosemary’s ánima or soul in them. Picking that sharpener up in my hand is tantamount to having her with me.