May 2, 2025Bob LuckyAt the Cemetery, the Church of St. James, Porto

I had a morbid curiosity about life spans and tropical diseases when I was young and regularly visited famous cemeteries. The Great Christian Burial Ground in Calcutta, now reincarnated as South Park Cemetery in Kolkata, was a favorite. Sir William Jones is buried there, his tomb a magnet for linguistics nerds. The night after paying my homage, I was wracked by pain, a kidney stone I later learned, and scrawled symptoms in my journal like a Romantic poet dying of TB. Now, having survived malaria, dengue fever, amoebic dysentery, an assortment of exotic parasites, and that kidney stone in Calcutta that made me want to die young, the only thing I look forward to in a cemetery is shade trees.