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| Rosa 'Zéphirine Drouhin' 28 June 2025 |
My Basque grandfather on my mother’s side, Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena was born in 1888 and died at age 30 in 1918. My grandmother told me that he might have had a heart attack as he had climbed the Filipino volcano Mayon a few weeks before.
My abuelita had a mourning band made which she wore for a year as that was the tradition for luto (from luctus in Latin that signifies pain).
My mother would often wear the mourning band to the opera, concerts or formal gatherings. I believe that my Rosemary may have worn it a few times.
I do not hold to that one year duration of mourning. Since Rosemary died on December 9, 2020, I am no better today than when 6 minutes before she died in bed she asked us, “Am I dying?”
Of late I have adopted this Rose, Rosa ‘Zéphirine Drouhin’ to represent my unceasing grief. It is in a little vase in the kitchen and it has been there for over a week. Somehow the rose is cooperating with my obsession and has not dropped its leaves.
Because my philosophy professor in 1962, Ramón Xirau, was an avid Platonist, I became one, too. Plato's essences are always in my mind.
When I take portraits I always have eye contact. Looking into those eyes of an unsmiling face is tantamount to getting a glimpse of my subject’s essence. Plato’s world of ideas, a world of perfect essences, was reflected in our human and not perfect world of our senses.
And yet, to me those eyes in my portraits and this rose represent an essence. I have simply transferred the essence of my Rosemary when she was alive to this rose.
Happily it is cooperating.
