Since I was a little boy I remember that my mother would say to me when I felt sad, “Sursum corda”. It is from the Roman Catholic Mass and it means “lift up your heart”. So I know that corda is simply the Latin version of Greek for heart. We have cardiologists, etc.

Today in my  Twitter/X feed I noticed a quote (ever so slightly prettified) by Uruguayan writer and poet Eduardo Galeano:

Recordar – del latín recordis – volver a pasar por el corazón.

To remember in Spanish the verb is recordar and a memory is a recuerdo. So Galeano’s quote is that a memory is something that passes by our heart again.

The quote had me thinking about my extensive library of about 3500 books (when we moved from Kerrisdale to Kits I threw away or gave away about 3000 more). With few exceptions I have read them all and that does not include the books I took out of the public library.

To me this means that inside me (my memory) I have a stack of books, a mental library. When I look at some of them I draw a blank. And then there are some like in the scans here of three books where I remember the first paragraph.

It would seem that our brain is a repository of books, memories, experiences and they all add up to make the person we are at any moment of the day. And that process only dies with our eventual oblivion.

From William Gibson’s Neuromancer: The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.

From Jane Rule’s Taking My Life: Writing an autobiography may be a positive way of taking my own life.

From Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

19 April 2025

Only too late in my life have I come to understand that when one is curious about an event or memory of one’s past the persons who can answer a question have to be alive.

That means that the answers have to be left to the imagination.

As today is Rosemary’s birthday (she would have been 81) I have to imagine what it was like when we first shared a bed.

I do know that it was in the loft of our good friend Raúl Guerrero Montemayor’s apartment on Calle Herodoto in Mexico City. There was not bed up there. It was a hard floor and a couple of pillows.

Today when I was walking Niño, taking the route that Rosemary taught him I passed by a neighbour’s house on Trutch. I saw the white camellia. I know we had one just like it in our Kerrisdale garden that we salvaged from a nearby house that was soon to be demolished. We never knew its cultivar name.

My rules, when I scan plants, are that they have to be from my garden or from a friend’s garden. I did not feel too guilty when I cut this bloom. The flower somehow reminds me about a pure, gentle lovemaking with my Rosemary. It was about a mutual discovery of our bodies.

I never did ask her what it was like. With my imagination I think this bloom defines that first time.

"Ningún lugar en la vida es más triste que una cama vacía."

Gabriel García Márquez.

“No place in life is sadder than an empty bed.”

 "La verdadera soledad se siente en la cama, cuando el silencio del otro lado pesa más que el sueño." Mario Vargas Llosa

 “True loneliness is felt in bed, when the silence of the other side weighs more than the dream.”

My translations

In Canada it is almost impossible to die immediately. One’s life persists. I get mail requesting that Rosemary needs to renew her driver’s licence. On Facebook today I was reminded that today is her 81^st birthday. I do not need to be reminded.

While I was born on August 31, 1942 my birth certificate records it on April 18, 1943. My mother told me that my father had forgotten to register my birth. Since my legal birthday is the day before Rosemary’s real one I have never forgotten it. I admit that our wedding anniversary is another story.

Both Márquez and Vargas Llosa have defined my loneliness in bed to a sad perfection. I feel ambivalent when my two cats cuddle up when I am on the bed. Their bedside presence is one that I shared with Rosemary. That absent presence on her side of the bed is one that I wonder if Niña and Niño understand. Every once in a while I loudly say, “Rosemary!” They do not react. They have been blessed by a fading memory. For me that is not the case. Rosemary is real every day and night, every moment that I am aware of my existence.

Today, her birthday, I sense her absent presence in the garden and somehow she is behind me as I write this. Would she be smiling? 

 A smile on a sombre day

My thoughts on a sombre day- Cirineo 

A solemn Easter Sunday 

Easter in Burnaby
 

I believe that my political and religious views are most personal. At the same time, during Easter Week (Semana Santa) I experience sombre days. I have written quite a few blogs on the subject. But I never equated that the word sombría, the Spanish equivalent, reveals that the origin of the word is from the Latin word sombrio for shadow.

Because I was raised in Argentina by a deeply religious grandmother and mother I was prohibited from turning on the radio on Viernes Santo. On Jueves Santo my grandmother took me to visit at least 6 different churches. It was a custom of the time.

Without (again) revealing my religious beliefs I think that knowledge of one’s religion if one associates it with one’s family it reinforces an intimacy that is now lost in this 21^st century.

The lore behind any religion, including that of Roman Catholicism, like good literature, even Shakespeare’s, has helped me put a handle on my existence.

My grandmother taught me that a man she called Cirineo (Simon of Cyrene) was forcibly made to help Christ carry His cross. To this day people my age know that “un Cirineo) is a person who reluctantly might help you. I do not believe there is an equivalent of that concept in English.

In Semana Santa, its sombreness is for me a time to reflect of my existence. Rosemary died four years ago, but Semana Santa I think not as much about her but of my childhood family. Rosemary, our daughters, and granddaughters did go to celebrate Easter Sunday a couple of times with lunch at Brock House. But that is my only Easter memory associated with Rosemary.

Brock House Easter

Today, Viernes Santo, was a sombre day for me in spite of the sun and being able to take Niño for a walk around the block. Why the sadness? I can add that it has been a sombre day with a tiny ray of light.

I visited a friend (I was invited) who has suffered Parkinson’s for at least 27 years. He communicated back to me when I texted that we needed to see each other if for a last time. My friend had told me that he was on a waiting list for a June MAID (Medically Assisted Induced Death). I texted back that the concept of death was a concept I felt I could discuss with him seeing I had no inclination to try to dissuade him.

Our two hour visit today (I took my coffee grinder, French press and good coffee beans) was an experience I will never forget. We calmly discussed his plans. He told me that his fractured family had come together because of his decision and that members who had not spoken to each other for years had started.

The most startling utterance from this calm man was, “It was time to go.”

We discussed philosophic concepts of death beginning with Democritus and down the line to others including Plato.

My experience, I believe is a rare one, and when I left I understood that it was a rare experience that I will treasure for what is left of my life.

I did ask him one question. I asked if there was something special about my Rosemary asking me, 6 minutes before she died, “Am I dying?” (I did not answer). His reply was, “It was good death. When I go I will be put to death quickly so I will not know that seconds left I will be dead."

And of course he made a will.

The scan illustrating this blog is a little cross I found on Mocambo Beach in Veracruz. I attached the chain and gave it to my mother. It represents a tactile memory of a woman that I respected and loved – my mother.

Rhododendron augustinii 'Marion MacDonnell' - 17 April 2025

Blue was my Rosemary’s favourite colour in the garden. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that blue is a difficult colour to find there.

My friend Alleyne Cook selected a Rhododenron augustinii that he thought had blue flowers. It is called Rhododenron augustinii ‘Marion MacDonnell’. None of us ever thought it was really blue. It was purple. He gave me a plant which in my Kitsilano garden is now a small tree. This year the flowers are almost blue. I smiled. While both my Rosemary and Alleyne are gone they would have told me, “Alex, I told you so.”

Alleyne Cook

For me blue is colour that reminds me of my blue winter uniform when I was a conscript in the Argentine Navy. Blue also brings me a memory touched with melancholy. In Buenos Aires, while in the navy, I had a lovely girl friend called Susy. One day she me and told me, “Alex you are never going to amount to anything and you have no culture. Don’t ever call me back. I am leaving you for a violinist in the Teatro Colón Symphony Orchestra.” I was living alone in a pension in the middle of a dark, cold and rainy Buenos Aires winter. I was depressed. I played the Miles Davis Kind of Blue album (which is the one I have kept all these years and is in this scan) endlessly somehow thinking that the more I got depressed the better it got.

In some way my Rosemary, like her colour blue, was a cool woman. She kept her thoughts to herself. But when she smiled she was all warmth. I never did tell her the significance of this album that has not a scratch and I could play it. I will not. I would rather wake up tomorrow and look out of the window. Rhododendron augustinii ‘Marion MacDonnell’ will be blue. It will remind me this Emily Dickinson Poem when I wake up tomorrow:

A slash of Blue - Emily Dickinson

204

A slash of Blue —

A sweep of Gray —

Some scarlet patches on the way,

Compose an Evening Sky —

A little purple — slipped between —

Some Ruby Trousers hurried on —

A Wave of Gold —

A Bank of Day —

This just makes out the Morning Sky.

More Emily Dickinson blogs

For I - inhabit Her

In Ceaseless Rosemary

The Morns are meeker

A Favourite Just Noticed 

All the Witchcraft that we need 

It only gives our wish for blue 

My heart is laden 

Of bronze and blaze

The red and the white 

A Lady Red

Hands 

I took my power in my hands 

That clarifies the sight 

 Nature rarer uses yellow

Rosemary white and a bit of yellow 

Nature rarer uses yellow

Luck is not chance 

T is iris sir 

The white heat

I tried to be a rose 

nature rarer uses yellow 

The Tulip

Nor would I be a poet 

November left then clambered up
You cannot make remembrance grow
November
the maple wears a gayer scarf