A little shopping and a visit to the dead

This morning, my husband and I left my parents' house early for Old San Juan, one of our favorite haunts, to have a big breakfast at our must-eat-there café, La Bombonera, and then to do a little bit of shopping (well, for me to do that and for my husband to tag along, more or less willingly).

At my small college on the hill, because so many of my colleagues and friends have ties of one kind or another to Britain, there are a lot of tea drinkers, and there's almost the assumption that we all share the same background and are, therefore, also tea drinkers. But having come from a Spanish Caribbean, coffee-producing island, I've never been a tea drinker, so my husband and I shopped instead for the best coffee made here to bring back for friends (and my "college daughter"), who put in a special request for it.

After our short shopping spree in Old San Juan was over, my husband and I went in search of my abuela, who is buried alongside my abuelo in the Old Río Piedras Cemetery. I didn't remember much about the location of the tomb (my abuelo died in 1977), but the sepulturero was in hand to guide us quickly to the pantheon where my abuela's ashes and my abuelo and his relatives all rest together.

There were no flowers on the tomb and my husband weeded its surroundings, remembering how particular my abuela was about her garden. We both promised her that on our next visit to Puerto Rico we would plant some perennials and spruce up the tomb.

Before leaving, we took a walk around the cemetery, which is obviously old and largely unattended. In fact, there were many broken tombs, overturned and empty flower urns, and several tombs on top of which there were abandoned pairs of shoes. Walking through a Catholic cemetery is always an experience, and here are some of the pictures I got.


\



It's sad to think of the dead as being so dis-remembered, but I assured my abuela (and abuelo, as well) that she is sorely missed, and that we will tend to her next time we're here. I know she would be pleased.

I am not the best of Catholics, and that's probably the greatest of understatements, but I like the idea that there are creatures with wings and blazing swords that are champions of good that we can pray to for solace and strength and guidance. Angels, saints and virgins are all part of our liturgy and represent some of the most beautiful iconography in our culture.

Although the cemetery looked sad and nearly abandoned, the statues of angels and virgins still stand stately guard over the dead, reminding us that they meant something to someone sometime, while the many, closely set tombs also stand as silent but eloquent witnesses of that.