Cultural conventions of sympathy

Today I went out in Florence to buy a sympathy card. I went to a number of different card shops and found cards for birthdays, marriages, new babies, retirement, graduation, love - everything but death. I started to wonder (not seriously) if they don’t have the problem of death here in Italy.

Finally I asked a sales assistant if he had any cards for sympathy. My Italian failed me at that point, but thankfully he helped me out by speaking English.

He brought out some small, plain white cards each with a single black stripe across the corner. He said in Italy people usually send these cards. I have learnt since that people often send a flower (or flowers) with the card.

In Australia, sympathy cards usually have soft colours and flowing cursive writing. Unfortunately, many have sappy words that you wouldn’t want to send to anyone. Flowers (roses, lilies, sometimes a whole garden), sometimes doves or butterflies, and swirly abstract shapes are the most common motifs used.

The Italian cards are much more stark. In some ways the semiotic of plain white with a bit of black is very sober and realistic about the finality of death itself.

The floral-ness of the Australian cards is perhaps intended to communicate instead something about the conventions of responding to death, i.e. often by giving flowers. The ugliness of death is hidden behind a curtain of artificial floral beauty.

Bureaucratic Circus

For the best part of the last two weeks, I have spent every weekday morning at one bureaucratic office or other on the infamous quest for the Italian ‘permesso di soggiorno’ - a permit to stay in Italy required of every foreigner who wants to stay for more than 3 months.

Queue of immigrants outside a Questura office (image from here)

I won’t go into all the gory details in this post - the process is still ongoing! When I finally have the permesso in my hot little hand I hope to write something that may be of use to other people like me - Australians married to European citizens who want or need to live in Florence for more than three months.

The relevance of my experience to anyone beyond that narrow designation is questionable at best, because I have heard that every city has a slightly different process you have to go through. It also makes a difference being married to a European citizen (I’m not yet convinced it makes the process much easier) and which non-European country you come from (the kinds of documents you get there and what the system is like).

Inside a Questura office- the one I went to in Florence looks more dingy than this, though! (Image from here)

I have been reading in Genesis where God spoke to Abraham (then Abram) and told him to leave his country, his people and his father’s household and go to the land that God would show him. That land happened to be the ancient land of Canaan.

The other day my husband and I were discussing this complicated process and the seemingly ridiculous documents we have been asked to produce. We reflected on how in days gone by people didn’t have to go through this kind of process, and we thought of Abraham and others in the Bible who had to go to a different country to live. It made me imagine what might have happened if Abraham had had to deal with Italy’s (or probably most countries’) immigration system, assuming Abraham had identification documents...

Canaan Immigration Officer: Signore, Signora, can I see your passports?
Abraham: Here they are.
CIO: Your passports only give your names as ‘Abraham’ and ‘Sarah’. Do you have a marriage certificate to show that you are married.
Abraham: Certainly. Here-
CIO: Hmmm... This says your names are ‘Abram’ and ‘Sarai’. Do you have a document that certifies your name change? I need to verify that you are the same people as on the marriage certificate?
Abraham: Um, no...
CIO: Under what circumstances did you change your names?
Abraham: God gave us new names.
CIO: Hmmm.... Well, that doest appear to be on this list of valid reasons for name change. I’m afraid I can’t process your request. You will have to go back to your home country and get all the necessary documentation, and then come back and try again.
Abraham: But I’m 75 years old and we’ve walked all the way here from Haran with everything we own.
CIO: I’m sorry, sir. There’s nothing I can do. You have to supply the appropriate paperwork.

Now of course, God himself could have come down with the name change certificates and waved them in the officer’s face, but he sometimes chooses not to act immediately in order to teach us perseverance and patience (James 1:2-4). This is what we have been learning.