Bougainvillea glabra 24 October 2026

 

Some might say that I am obsessive about missing my Rosemary who died 6 years ago. As I see it they don’t understand what it is like to have been married for 52 years. In all aspects she was my intellectual equal except she was better at finances.

I noticed today that her Bougainvillea glabra that she planted in a pot was in bloom. It has been in my bedroom since she died 6 years ago.

Both of us were not religious but we did believe in a life spark or force. When I photographed my family I always had my camera close and at eye level and I would ask them to look into the lens. Somehow in those eyes that stare at me in so many framed photographs in my house walls, I can recognize that unique spirit or Platonic essence drawing me into them.

Rosemary and I both believed that when one of our cats would die we would immediately get a new (middle-aged) one. We both thought that something of the dead cat transferred into the new one. The new cat had something of the old cat in him (or her).

To this I can now add how melancholic I get when I look at some of her perennials still blooming in my fall garden. Are they Rosemary sparks beckoning me?

And so these little bougainvillea blooms have a little bit of Rosemary’s spirit, soul or spark.

I can sense her in them. And I cry.