You’d think there’d be some sort of warning.
A text, a name, a passing mention at breakfast like, “Hey, by the way, we’re going to a funeral today.”
Nope. Carmen just handed me a black shirt and said, “Don’t wear the sandals.”
That was the full prep.
I assumed it was a church thing.
A mass, maybe. Her cousin’s communion or a saint’s day, something Catholic and ceremonial where I could sit quietly and pretend to know when to stand.
But then she wore no makeup. Tied her hair back. Didn’t say a word in the car.
By the time we pulled into the gravel lot behind the whitewashed chapel halfway up the hill past Orgiva, I knew I’d stepped into something bigger.
Something heavier.
Something extremely not-for-tourists.
I leaned over and whispered, “Who died?”
She just blinked at me and said, “You didn’t know her.”
Cool. That helped.
The dead woman’s name, I later learned, was Rosalía.
She was 94. Never married. Owned three mules and cursed in four languages. That’s what Paco said, anyway. I only figured this out because I overheard him telling some guy with a face like a dried fig who seemed to be rolling a cigarette using bits of an old receipt.
I tried to look solemn and local.
Hard to do when you’re a tall British man sweating through linen in a sea of short, leathery Spaniards all wearing serious shoes and knowing exactly where to stand.
There’s a choreography to Spanish grief.
The slow head nods. The cheek-kiss-loop of condolence. The muttered prayers in rhythm with the old ladies’ rosary beads that sound like wind through pine needles. I stood at the edge, trying not to look lost. Or too alive.
I must’ve been standing wrong. A small woman with a fierce bun smacked my elbow and shoved me gently two steps to the left, into a shady patch under a fig tree.
She was right. It was better there.
Then came the moment. The coffin lifted.
Everyone went silent like someone hit pause on the universe. I stood. Froze. Unsure whether to bow, kneel, hum, salute—anything. Carmen touched my hand. I didn’t look at her, but I let her hold it.
And here’s the thing.
Even without knowing Rosalía, even with the language gap and the sun in my eyes and sweat making my shirt stick to my spine, I felt it.
The village sadness.
This collective ache that had nothing to do with me, and somehow everything to do with me, now that I’d shown up and stood there.
Maybe that’s what funerals are for in places like this.
Not just grief.
Witnessing.
Being part of the memory even if you didn’t live it.
Afterward, in the square, someone handed me a tiny plastic cup of sherry.
Sweet and sharp.
I sipped it in silence, next to Carmen. We didn’t talk. A dog barked at the bell tower.
The old woman who’d elbowed me earlier came over and gave me a boiled egg in a napkin.
She didn’t say a word.
And I felt strangely seen.