I didn't get to say goodbye

Nonna and Nonno

last sunday my surrogate grandmother died, I love her and miss her so much...

this is what my mother wrote about Nonna and Nonno:

In all the years we have been in Vicenza, we have been friends with our old neighbors Toni and Amelia. They became adoptive grandparents to Arthur and Daniela and good helpful friends to all of us. Toni came and helped us in the yard for many years. He thought nothing of climbing up a towering cyprus tree and cutting off the top at 80 years old. Finally he stopped riding his moto so we he didn't come anymore. We always went to visit them and took all of our visitors to meet them. They welcomed whoever showed up at their door no matter what time of the day it was. Toni talked and told stories even if it was in a different language, and Amelia had such a sense of humor she could make people laugh in any language. Toni died in May 2006, with his boots on working in the yard. Amelia lasted a year and a half without him, although she would say "non c'e niente senza Toni, tutto e` cambiato": without Toni there is nothing everything has changed. She had a very good Romanian woman taking care of her, who probably kept her alive that long. She had heart disease which worsened with time and quietly took her home on the 5th of January. She asked Art if he would take her on a cruise a few hours before she died. I went there 2 or 3 times a week for all the time we were here. Amelia was a true friend, and I loved her as did any of you who were able to meet her and laugh with her and look into those wonderful eyes.

A chapter has closed for us but not only....that generation who lived through 2 wars, suffered from hunger and didn't really get indoor plumbing and electricity until 30-40 years ago, is disappearing from Italy. They were the backbone of Italy, living simply, gathering food from the fields and forest, cooking meals to die for in simple kitchens without a lot of equipment, raising animals that they ate--meat with no drugs and creepy additives, not consuming because they remembered how it was to live without and what it was like to carry water up the hill each day from a communal spring in the valley. They said that was the good life in which people were happy and willing to share what little they had. As they disappear from the countryside, I hope Italy manages to hold onto what makes it a charming and wonderful country to visit and live in.

FUNeral

on death

And after your death, when most of you for the first time realize what life here is all about, you will begin to see that your life here is almost nothing but the sum total of every choice you have made during every moment of your life.
Your thoughts, which you are responsible for, are as real as your deeds. You will begin to realize that every word and every deed affects your life and has also touched thousands of lives.
There is no joy without hardship. If not for death, would we appreciate life? If not for hate, would we know the ultimate goal is love?...At these moments you can either hold on to negativity and look for blame, or you can choose to heal and keep on loving. Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.

from the womb to the tomb

every day we grow closer to our imminent death, every minute that passes only draws us nearer to our own demise; as we grow older, as new experiences are lived, old ones die, so one could say that a bit of us dies every day, are we nothing more then walking corpses? what exactly does it mean to be alive?

today for example I could very well say I don't feel too alive, in fact being dead sounds quite appealing, hypothetically speaking that is, I'm not on a mission of self deliverance, I just want to point out that if I were to die tomorrow, I wouldn't complain, up until that moment I would have lived a good life, to it's fullest no doubt with no regrets of the sort; so I'm at peace with the fact that sooner or later I WILL die. It just hurts when a little of you dies for one reason or another, when a hope or a dream dies, that in my opinion, is more painful then the actual physical death. So one then would conclude, that we are in constant mourning, because we are always dying, even if we are alive, I guess that's part of the process of growing up, we grieve for the loss of the innocence and purity of being a child, and we weep for the people who come and go in our lives, we lament for the lost potential, an idea that doesn't turn out as one would hope.

living is a very difficult task, a gift no doubt, but none the less a strenuous one