It’s frangipani season in our son David’s adopted country of Thailand.
Our sons call their mother “Moonie.”
David says that the frangipani “remind me of Moonie in their ethereal beauty.”
Moonie, my wife Anne, is terminally ill with glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer.
Frangipani | The Tree of Fragrance – Thailand Tidbits | Travel Tips from Thailand
And one of Anne’s favourite books is called Frangipani:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1013627.Frangipani
Here’s a poem for Anne and frangipani
Anne and Frangipani
Anne sits by the window.
Her locks lost to chemo’s ruthless art,
Now bare, her scalp aches in sunlight—tender, raw, apart.
In her imaginings, a frangipani blooms beyond the pane—
ivory petals, blushing gold at the throat,
unfolding with the hush of early morning in gentle Thailand.
Anne remembers laughter, rooms brimming with the living,
memories settling on her shoulders like petals on dew.
Her mind grows hazy at the edges—
a garden slipping into dusk—
where names and faces dissolve like mist.
Frangipani: the flower that graces South East Asia’s summer season,
fragile, fleeting, perfumed with longing.
It falls in the night, unheralded,
carpeting the grass with brief beauty—
each blossom a silent benediction.
Anne’s days, once bright as sunlit petals,
are now counted by heartbeats and hush,
her laughter distilled in the air,
the way the frangipani’s scent lingers,
sweet but vanishing, a secret only the breeze remembers.
Both Anne and the blossom—
too radiant for tether,
too delicate for time’s unyielding hands.
The world pauses, breath held,
as if not to startle their grace,
knowing that beauty, however luminous,
is a guest who must leave before dawn.
Yet in the falling, in the fading,
there is a gentle promise:
that what is cherished is never lost,
and the memory of a flower—like the soul of Anne—
remains, soft and undiminished,
long after the petals have gone.
Your friend,
Robert
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/
