The Guardian's Comment is Free website recently republished a quote by Dennis Potter from a 1994 interview in which he talks about dying, as part of their 'In praise of' series.
It's a beautiful quote:
"At this season, the blossom is out in full now … and instead of saying 'Oh that's nice blossom' … last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it."
I read this last week, fresh from admiring the blossom on our street and in the park. This time last year I snuggled my four month old baby in her sling and showed her the blossom, the patterns it made in the sunlight and the beauty of a single flower. This time round she toddles under the tree picking up fallen blooms, pointing to the trees and uttering her most frequent word, 'flower', sometimes in wonder, sometimes with excitment, sometimes as a statement of fact.
And Potter's thoughts, seeing blossom for the last time, are, I imagine, very similar to my daughter's thoughts seeing it for the first and second time. I do not know for sure what she is thinking when she points at blossom and says 'flower', but I suspect it is something along the lines of "that is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom what there ever could be, and I can see it." Unless of course, it's pink.
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