MY DAD

When I was in Verona, Italy few weeks ago my dad gave me a talk about the end of his life.

He told me that he’s certain that a soul exists because he could see it leave the body of the many people he saw when they were dyeing and that he wants me to know that I’ve made him very proud in the way I’ve been living my life.

All I could say is that it’s not that I would wake up each morning with the plan to do something to make him proud of me, I actually always did everything the way I could imagine he would have done it himself, so if he’s proud of me he must be very proud of himself too because he is the one who gave to me the parameters against which measure the efficacy of words or actions.

He just got a surgery to repair the hip femur he had broken in a fall in his yard and much to everyone’s relief the surgery went well, now he’s going to have to do very much rehab to reinforce naturally both the bones and the muscles.

He told me that I’m the one who inspires him all the time because I’ve been fighting with everything I have to recover as much as possible my TBI, so we kind of agreed that even if he’ll have to use a wheelchair he’ll do it thinking of me all the time.

All I could say is that I’d rather have had my accident 40 years later because to be forced to be on a wheelchair “in the middle of walk of life”( or about 40y/o as D. Alighieri wrote in his Divine Comedy) is a nightmare that adds to the insult to have lost forever a wonderful wife who’s mother of my Lingiardi treasures who will never forget that I’m their real father, no matter what they are being forced to think.

I asked my dad to – if he dies – come to me as a soul and help me to walk again and believe even more that God is real, a father figure who cares for us all as His children, so no challenges we have in our lives are anything that we are unable to cope with.

My dad has done his surgery successfully so even if I didn’t need to see his soul I got back my faith in God, that just by itself is huge because only when you make the willing decision to believe in God you can be forgiven of all your sins and recover from anything.

Thank you dad, I’m glad you are still here with/for us and you encouraged my return to the Catholic faith.