Almost and Actual Saudade
Understanding a tender Portuguese word for remembrance via memories of an Irish grandmother and an Afro-Brazilian orisha
It seemed at first that he must have disappeared. Otherwise I should have seen him already.
“Is he gone?” I said to my husband.
We had returned in March 2024 to the Botanical Garden (Jardim Botânico) in Rio de Janeiro.
We first visited the garden in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. In the years since, Tatti Moreno’s statue of the healer deity Ossanha had grown in my mind to be even larger than its true height. I expected it to loom 20 feet high.
So I felt an odd panic to think it was missing, that maybe the statue had been moved and that I wouldn’t see it again.
My husband laughed in a kind way.
Ossanha was still there, standing tall and calm in the garden.
“How could you miss it?” my husband said.
In my defense, Tatti Moreno’s depiction of Ossanha is set in harmony with the garden. The statue blends with…
