In 2017, Puerto Rico endured the catastrophic Hurricane Maria, unofficially blamed for some 3,000 deaths. From 2019 to 2020, the island was buffeted by unrelated earthquake swarms that further traumatized an already-shaken population. These events - which are never merely “natural,” given that the island’s lack of services make them far more precarious - inflect the considerations of death and aging in PERFUME DE GARDENIAS, an allegory for an entire island entering a profoundly uncertain era and determining how to mourn its losses.