I’m hoping
that as you read this, you’ll be jumping from the chair you are sitting on,
just like I’d do myself.
In fact last
time I saw my dearly beloved dad was in August 2014, 2 months later he passed
away and with my greatest surprise he told me that since he had
seen each and every one of his relatives – including his parents – pass over with their souls leaving their
bodies, he was absolutely sure that life doesn’t end with our death, he even
said “I’m actually curious to see where we go after we die and that’s why I’m
not afraid of it” .
In truth I’m
hoping to write a decent post here, because there truly are no words to
describe what a great man my father was.
Aside from
the fact that he know all about the “recent discoveries” of quantum physics I
have a very clear memory too of him saying often what Mr. Lavoisier was saying
hundreds of years before my dad’s birth, or that “nothing is neither created nor
destroyed”, my dad did say this, kind of often actually.
Something
else that was very often in his mouth was about the length of names, his first
name was in fact somehow long and when put together with the last one (Gianfranco
Lingiardi……19 letters!!!) he remembered it being a real nightmare having to
write it all down when he was learning how to write (6 y/o) This is actually
the very reason why my sister and I have short names – Carlo and Anna.
I have so
many beautiful memories of him that I could write an entire book with them, I’m
just going through few highlights that I’m going to put here in no order:
·
My
two treasures rather than calling him “grandpa” they always used the Italian, “nonno”, and they both loved their nonno very much.
·
My
dad loved their mother and my now ex-wife very much too, to the point that he was saying that she
was like another daughter to him, or Anna’s sister.
·
At
that time the currency in Italy was the Lira that had the exchange rate was 1
Lira = 1.8 USD, almost the opposite of what we have today that the EU has
replaced the Lira, 1 EU = 1.12 USD.
Regardless,
he gave very much money to us whenever I bought every
home we owned here in the USA. I recently figured out that in total over the years my dad's contribution to my purchasings of homes here in the USA came to a total of $1mil, just like if your son goes to live in any European state you decide to help him by gifting to him 1 mil of EU, given that now the exchange rates are the exact opposite of what they were about 30 years ago.
This was
his way to show his support and show happiness for my way of living and working so
far away, especially for my American career (as he used to call it).
He also
sent his money to pay for the divorce attorney, but I’m not going to elaborate
on the reasons why he felt it important to take care of it directly.
Someone
else I’m not going to talk about is the father of my former wife who simply smoked away his own life.
I remember
of the 2 or 3 times he came to visit his daughter when we lived in DE, his
biggest (and sole) excitement was that the Marlboro 100’s were much cheaper in DE –
due to taxes - compared to CA, in fact I remember gifting 3 or 4 bars with 20
packs each of Marlboro cigarettes to take back to Fresno where he lived.
I remember
too that while he was visiting we used to make him go to smoke outside the
backyard on the wood balcony we had there, since his after dinner meant smoking
about 30 cigarettes, I was told that right before he died, and he lived in his
garage smoking like a chimney and popping morphine pills like they are candies.
My plan
used to be to take the way my dad was with me as the example to act of the way I wanted to be
for both of my treasures……….talk about my misunderstanding Jesus when he said
that to remain alive would surely be painful.
Hang in
here anyway there are two more posts to come, one about who God truly is and
another about love (both God and love, very close to
each other)
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