February is considered the universal month of love, the rife commercialization, dainty little red hearts, and chocolates, might have us remiss, to recount the method behind the madness.

One Legend has it that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Perhaps what strikes me the most, is the parallel, given the small distance between love and death, in the wake of Covid 19. A lover recounted to me that his lawyer's partner had to quite literally breathe for him as his lungs were caving in, risking her own life, to save his. The teller of the tale is no longer, to give credence to the account.

Saint Valentine took on the noble exploit to rightly defy a regime that prioritized war above the sanctity and preservation of love, even at his own peril. Today, reigning free, the pandemic demands that we contend with kisses marked by death, never knowing if they are sweeter than all the world's honey because they might very well be our last.