(click on the image to enlarge)"Eternal Flame"_ Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France
© Flavio Martín Morante_2008
On 2008, Dawn and I visited the
Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, a place which I like to call the "celebrity cemetery" since there lay in eternal rest the remains of people like Balzac, Molière, Oscar Wilde, Edit Piaf, and Jim Morrison along a list of many well known people that have really left a mark somehow in the world, specially in the arts and sciences.
That day it did it's fair share of raining, so our visit was somehow shadowed by that, but still we managed to take a couple hours walk looking a tombs, like if there was not better way than to spend the time, but to be honest that is something we have enjoyed on every city we have been able to visit, not for the morbid fascination of death, but for the simple reason of learning, as places like cemeteries hold many unwritten stories about the cities (and its inhabitants) in which they are located.
Anyhow... the story I want to share today, on this day where everybody get's excited about that dozen roses or the ring they pop for their loved ones like the other 364 days is not the same, is the story of the picture at the beginning of this post.
I took it on that rainy day walk, while surrounded by the vigilant presence of long time gone figures. As we got purposely lost in the labyrinths of grave sites and mausoleums, we came across this gravesite, in which like on a Dawn of the Dead movie, two arms (one of a guy and the other one of a girl judging by the size/shape of the hands) seem to come out of it in order to reach each other on the outside world. Now.... to think how creepy it was will be the first reaction but once you pass that, you get to somehow feel some admiration and wonder for whoever it was (could not find a name on it) and how strong their love must have been that even after dead, they wanted to be together (somehow), even after "death tore them apart".
Anyway... Happy Valentines.
