Dahlia hybrida 'Hypnotic White' 4 November 2025

As people read less I have notice the terrible encroachment of cliche words like iconic, stunning, award-winning that rub me the wrong way. Is that last choice of mine now also a cliche.

One that comes to mind is “been there, done that.” When my friends tell me that I retort, “but I have not done that yet.” Today I thought of a variation of that expression that I like. It is “was there, lived it.”

To me that expression sums up my 83 years of my life up to know and to realize that I lived over 60% of it with my Rosemary as we were together for 52 years. And the expression does leave room to live a bit more.

Whenever now in my solitude that I share with my cats Niño and Niña I try to find a way of illustrating that feeling with some sort of scan. This particular framed photograph of Rosemary wearing her wedding bird dress has that disarming almost sad look on her face. I never figured out if it was her protestant education in a very small town that contributed to her melancholy look. She did her best to leave New Dublin and graduated with excellent grades from Queen’s University.

For as long as I think about my Rosemary constantly (I will have to make an exit into oblivion to stop it, at the very least I can enjoy looking for excuses to scan my framed and unframed photographs of her.