SCATTERED PETALS

"After loving you so much,
can I forget you for eternity,
and have no other choice?"
Robert Traill Spence Lowell 1917-1977 (Obit 1973)

Remembering Anibal...

This week, one year ago, was his final struggle and each day I am remembering the details of that difficult time. While I wrote the blog on Nostalgia, he was very much on my mind, and that bolero tune we sometimes danced to kept going around in my head. Then while I was writing my travel blog about Chile the other day, something else happened that made me know his spirit is very close by...

On my dresser below the window I have a miniature ceramic bench that Cecilia, his wife, gave me which he kept in his bedroom. Beside it is his picture and the poem he wrote while he was in the hospital "I am not going to die..." Next to that is a slender glass vase containing a dried red rose he gave me one night at the Latin Quarter.

As I was sitting at the computer reading through my Chile blog ("A Sentimental Journey") the other day, suddenly there was a whooshing sound. A breeze had blown up through the slightly opened window above and two of the petals from the dried rose blew down and settled on the ceramic bench. In that instant I knew it was a 'message' of sorts from him.

Perhaps it was imagination, just the wind through the window ... Still, I could feel his presence, as if he was trying to speak to me.

This will be a week of deep nostalgia, remembering...I can still envision those scenes in his bedroom...so tragic...etched forever in my memory.

I'll phone the girls this week. I know they'll be thinking of their Dad. Iva says he often visits her too. I'll tell her about the scattered petals. She'll understand.