the one with the rose tattoo

everything that's beautiful is also sad

Good morning my beautiful friends,

It’s Monday morning (in Rome), and also a very early Monday morning in Toronto. I just woke up from a 14 hour sleep, and genuinely feel reinvented. I think this is one of the key benefits in living a dual life - you can sleep in as late as you want and you’re still ahead of everyone back home. 

Mother’s Day weekend is my least favorite weekend of the entire year. And this isn’t to say I am bitter for those celebrating - in fact, I am not bitter at all. I love seeing daughters post pictures of them and their moms out for brunch, shopping, at their wedding, etc. It is my least favorite weekend because grief has this funny way of surprising you, and you never know what emotions you’ll get. I read somewhere a while ago that with trauma - the mind forgets - but the body remembers. 

For those of you who don’t know, my mom passed away the day after Mother’s Day, 5 years ago. Technically it would be exactly 5 years on May 15, but since today is the day after Mother’s Day - I thought this would be a beautiful moment to write a letter from me to you. 

So, because I decided that I didn’t know how grief would surprise me this weekend - I listened to this little voice inside of me that said - maybe book a mini weekend trip to Florence? Make new memories out of old stories. 

My best friend said to me a while ago: “Everything that is beautiful is also sad.” And this sentence rings through my head a lot. Can I be honest with you? Whenever I’m in Florence, I feel like there’s this combined energy of both beauty and sadness. I’m in love with the frescos and the fashion, having an espresso while looking over the river Arno, and how you can walk around the city in an hour but it somehow looks different every time. But I can’t help but feel like I’m being followed around by this air of melancholy. Maybe it’s the city’s medieval history that still lingers, but there’s just something about it that I just can’t name. 

Remember how, a few newsletters back - I talked about one of my favorite movie moments in How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days. Kate Hudson’s sitting in the bathroom, and she starts crying to Matthew McConaughey and tells him it’s because, “When your mom hugged me, she really hugged me.” To which he responds with, “But sweetie, that’s a good thing.” 

Anyways, how does this relate to my weekend in Florence? Well, I’ll tell you. I did what I love doing, go to Zara - buy a new black silk dress, got a panini from my favorite nonno. Went into vintage stores and debated buying a vintage Dior scarf, and then went back to my hotel and regretted not buying the vintage Dior scarf. 

And as fate and destiny and the air in Florence would have it, I ended up meeting someone. A quick someone, but still a someone. And this someone tells me that his mom’s name was Rose, and that she died 15 years ago. And he too, of course, has a tattoo of a rose on the left side of his body. And in that moment, I really needed “It Feels Like Home” to play in the background while I excused myself to the bathroom to shed a few tears. 

Everything that’s beautiful is also sad. Maybe it’s because you know these moments are not meant to last. Or maybe, it’s because they end up revealing a part of ourselves that we have tucked away, thinking that nothing beautiful would ever come out of our most painful memories. And it’s these moments that surprise you the most. The moments, like the emotions of grief, that are unpredictable. That take you away from the chaos of a crowded bar at 3 am, and into a place where nothing else seems to exist anymore.

And maybe the purpose of this weekend was to show that life - even with its most heartbreaking moments, can still be so beautiful. Even more beautiful than we imagined it to be. When we both said goodbye years ago, I never pictured that 5 years later, I’d be sitting at one of the most beautiful cocktail bars in Florence, wearing a black slip dress, sipping on a gin-snow pea-lemon cocktail, while simultaneously, meeting someone who also shared similar pain.

I sat in the Rose Garden on Sunday, and wrote down: “Everything beautiful is also sad. Like when a piece is published, a dinner is done, or a moment is over.” Well, I think that’s the beauty of writing, isn’t it? To relive those moments, and realize that they’re never really over, are they?

So, my friends, I’ve realized Saturdays are for falling in love (even if only for a moment), and Mondays are for making numerous espressos and remembering why we feel things in the first place.

Anyways, now I have a half-drunk bottle of Nebbiolo and a tiny bag of dried rose petals on my kitchen counter. Memories of a moment.

I love you,

Emily