It is the time of love and lust and lovers.  Saint Valentine’s Day is but a few hours away my friends.

Have you secured your darling who you would hand over a Valentine?  Have you yet to ask for that tender, devilish, sexy soul to be your dear? A few hours remain this night, but do hurry. Unless of course you want to remain secret. Sending  a secret Valentine to that person you admire is also an option. Perhaps you can send him, or her, a blood red rose. Or simply, a lovely card professing your desperate, passionate, obsessive longing for them to recognize you and want you as well.

There are many martyrs named Valentine, but there is one in particular who some believe is the man who birthed this day of love and compassion.  According to the golden legend, Legenda Aurea, compiled around 1260, St. Valentine secretly wed Christians during the time of Roman Emperor Claudius II’s rule. When Claudius learned of these marriages, at a time when Pagan Rome ruled and Christianity was banned, St. Valentine was jailed. In jail, he befriended his jailers blind daughter, and eventually they fell in love. On the evening of his execution he wrote her a simple note that read; “From your Valentine.” Later his beloved’s eyesight was restored, granting the miracle for his saint hood.

I admit my friends that there is someone out there that my black, spiked heart longs for. Yet, my life is eternally one of misery and regret as I cart away bodies of the young and old, those that have loved and those that have been loved. So, when the relics of St. Valentine are brought out February 14 in a casket at the Whitefriar Carmelite Church in Dublin for a mass dedicated to youth and love, hope that my cold, empty heart will find a Valentine.

-Gravedigger