Jasmine

Jasmine by Purpur: sentimental prose

Julijana gave me this jasmine bush as a present some 20?? years ago. I think. Julijana was a work colleague, a WW2 orphan from Kozara, small, intense woman who befriended me from the first day I met her. We never talked about ordinary or everyday things. We talked philosophy, sociology, history. Grand themes and ideas. But she liked to laugh and little indents showed in her plump cheeks when she did so. She was a strange friend. In 1995 she died. She had cancer. I called her from the seaside, where I had been spending my summer holidays, and her husband told me that she was really bad. A week later she was dead. I do not visit her grave because I do not know where it is. I tried to contact her husband so he could show it to me, but it was futile. And I decided that it really didn't matter. She lives, oh so vividly, in my yard, every spring, when the beautiful, fragrant jasmine blooms. I stand by it and talk to her: Juliška, Juliška moja!

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