What Happens to Our Love When It’s Filtered Through Grief
Processing 2020 in a cemetery so you don’t have to.
A few weeks after the presidential election was called back in my home country, the United States of Giving-Me-An-Ulcer, I went out to Barcelona’s Poblenou Cemetery looking for a famous statue. It’s called El Petó de la Mort in Catalan, El Beso de la Muerte in Spanish, and The Kiss of Death in English.
I’m somewhat of a cemetery connoisseur and a massive history buff, so this sort of excursion would normally fill me with deferential, if not downright giddy, warmth. Napoleon razed this cemetery to the ground in 1775, for France’s sake. And my country’s been run, for the last four years, by a coked-up Napoleon wanna-be. Très pertinent!
It wasn’t until I entered the grounds that I realized I’d made a huge mistake.
See, what I’d just done is set up the circumstances for a deep-dive into the collective and personal trauma of this past year. This was not at all the lighthearted historical romp I told myself I was setting out to write. I was a writer who’d missed all the foreshadowing.
Only an idiot goes to a cemetery, during a pandemic, after their country’s just been rescued from the brink of fascism, thinking they didn’t come to face their demons and have a good…
