The Sleeping Beauty of Palermo
written by: Michelle Reale
“… Her eyes are not closed and never have been.”
– Dario Piombino-Mascalli
In her glass covered coffin, Rosalia Lombardo sleeps the sleep of the angels. In the Capuchin catacombs, death masquerades as life. The long gone hang from walls in their Sunday best, mouths agape as if astonished at their own improbable conditions. The skin of her paper-thin eyelids reveals her still blue eyes, as they catch the afternoon light through the side windows. Witnesses like to say she comes to life, that she moves her eyes, and scans the room, watching those who watch her. We have her father to thank for this specimen of a time we can never know. When pneumonia assailed the delicate lungs of Rosalia, one week before her second birthday, as the Spanish Flu surged, she succumbed like so many. Of her mother, we know nothing, but can imagine the fear and the grief. Of her father, we know he could not live without her countenance and asked an embalmer to preserve her as much and as long as was humanly possible. One part glycerin, one part formalin, zinc sulfate, zinc chloride, and salicylic acid injected into the femoral artery, and the family could visit her every Sunday after lunch and before their own repose in the hot afternoons. It should come as no surprise that the silk ribbon tied on the top of her head, on the day of her death, wilts dejectedly, though her baby face is peaceful. Because natural processes can only be delayed, she has begun to turn a waxy yellow, leading the curators of the catacombs to scramble to preserve further deterioration. Now, once on extravagant display, she lies, alone, in a hermetically sealed tiny coffin, where she is no longer visible to curious and morbid onlookers. It comforts me to know that Rosalia is in her dark enclosure, safe from the spectacle that her father initiated, but is no longer around to see, settled into the peaceful eternal sleep that will, eventually, come to us all.
- The Sleeping Beauty of Palermo - June 12, 2024
