Love in the Gardens

Zadie Smith on her father, mourning, and the gardens of Italy:

“There is a sentimental season, early on in the process of mourning, in which you believe that everything you happen to be doing or seeing or eating, the departed person would also have loved to do or see or eat, were he or she still here on earth. Harvey would have loved this fried ball of rice. He would have loved the Pantheon. He would have loved that Rossetti of a girl with her thick black brows.

“In the first season of mourning there is a tendency to overstate. But still I feel certain that this was the garden that would have made us both happy.”