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| Rosa 'Brother Cadfael' November 11 2015 |
Today is Remembrance Day in Canada. Because I was born in
the Southern Hemisphere most of my family was not affected directly by either
of the world wars or the subsequent wars that followed. On my mother’s side I
have a few Filipino relatives who weathered the Japanese occupation of Manila
in WW II. But there are no soldiers in my family who ever risked their lives.
The exception may have been one or two cousins of my Basque grandfather who fought
in the Spanish Civil War. One was shot by a firing squad.
So my experience of Remembrance Day is limited to the
many books I have read and have in my library about the world’s wars. My
experience in the Argentine Navy
preceded the Falklands’s War. The only pang of pain I ever felt about that war
was seeing on TV an Argentine Navy
Skyhawk skimming across the horizon during the Battle of Goose Green and
watching it suddenly explode into a puff. I had a few years before translated
from English into Spanish the operating and maintenance manuals for these
planes that had been purchased from the United States.
I told myself that the pilot officer had chosen to be a
career military man so his demise did
not affect me. I did not know him. But I knew his plane in great detail! I did feel sorry for all those Argentine conscripts who were ill-equipped, poorly trained and no match for a real professional army.
While walking in the debris of our garden (many of the
plants we have taken in a van to my daughter’s property in Lillooet) I noticed
one rose in bloom. In my shady garden this is a rare occurrence in November.
The rose is an English Rose called Brother Cadfael. Some years ago I took a
lovely gicleé scan of the rose to my
mentor Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. as a gift. A couple of months later I
visited him and noticed that over his guest my print had been handsomely framed
(he made the frame) and that it had a brass plaque with the name of the rose
and that I had given it to him.
Brother Edwin died in 2013. I miss him. Rosa ‘Brother
Cadfael’ in bloom today is a fine remembrance of the man who helped me become
one.
I sniffed at the rose and I said in my mind those
wonderful words from Luke 22:19-20 King
James Version
“…this do in remembrance of me.”