The last goodbye
Once i’ve imagined this day…
And everyone on this earth has this destiny…but when someone leaves us it’s always sad, even if one is old aged
I met this soldier few years ago. Someone asked me to interview him about the time he lived during the WWII. Since that day, when I entered his house waiting for him because he was still in the yard working with the woods, I’ve enjoyed him and I’ve always stopped to talk to him when I had the chance. During celebrations, when he was riding by bike, when he was walking in the church place…I enjoyed the way he talked to me about his experience and about how bad and unjust is a war. I got shivers when he described me about the Liberation days…it seemed to me to see the flags…and the crowd invading the streets and screaming. That was a wonderful sensation that I’ll bring with me forever. I imagined how cold it was fighting in the Russian steppe and in the Apennines mountains when he joined the Partisans’ groups in the Resistance days.
7 months ago his wife died and I got to know about that. In the dark winter nights it happened to me to drive by his house during the days of the vigil, before the funeral. I felt bad every time I passed by…I braked and then put again my foot on the accelerator, as I didn’t have enough courage to stop. I didn’t know what I could do nor say.
When I saw him, some months later, he asked me if I knew about his wife and I saw a tear falling from his eyes and I felt bad. Then we just continued to talk and we went to this lunch together with all the other soldiers. I understood he was loosing him mind; he sometimes started to tell me something and then he forgot.
I started to see him only walking and I knew how he loved his bike. He told me that his daughters forbid him to ride his bike as they were worried he could fall apart. In the last times, every time I drove to the village for some reason or when I came back from work in the evening…I saw him walking on the sidewalk…going “downtown” or coming back in the direction of his house.
I ‘ve told to myself that I had to grab a bottle of milk from the farm and go to visit him…or I’ve thought I had to stop “one of these days when I see him on the sidewalk”…I was always running somewhere..and I said to myself..well, next time.
I didn’t have a next time…the other day he walked to the cemetery to visit his wife and he died on her grave. Now I have his certificates of the Nation Patriots he borrowed me to write the article about his life. When I read the words and the phrases about freedom and sacrifice I think that we owe so much to that generation that we’re almost loosing.
Yesterday at his funeral there were many hunch and limping men…they could barely walk, but they hold a very high and I suppose very heavy flag with the colors of our country and the blue and white Veterans’ sign. They stood up bringing the mourning bandage. One of them at a certain point, before the end of the ceremony, read the “Prayer of the Soldier” and then a trumpet started to play.
It seems like in this life there are some things that are so much about life going on, not stopping that it doesn’t seem true to me.
He has always bring the flags and it’s hard to think he won’t be there next time.
And everyone on this earth has this destiny…but when someone leaves us it’s always sad, even if one is old aged
I met this soldier few years ago. Someone asked me to interview him about the time he lived during the WWII. Since that day, when I entered his house waiting for him because he was still in the yard working with the woods, I’ve enjoyed him and I’ve always stopped to talk to him when I had the chance. During celebrations, when he was riding by bike, when he was walking in the church place…I enjoyed the way he talked to me about his experience and about how bad and unjust is a war. I got shivers when he described me about the Liberation days…it seemed to me to see the flags…and the crowd invading the streets and screaming. That was a wonderful sensation that I’ll bring with me forever. I imagined how cold it was fighting in the Russian steppe and in the Apennines mountains when he joined the Partisans’ groups in the Resistance days.
7 months ago his wife died and I got to know about that. In the dark winter nights it happened to me to drive by his house during the days of the vigil, before the funeral. I felt bad every time I passed by…I braked and then put again my foot on the accelerator, as I didn’t have enough courage to stop. I didn’t know what I could do nor say.
When I saw him, some months later, he asked me if I knew about his wife and I saw a tear falling from his eyes and I felt bad. Then we just continued to talk and we went to this lunch together with all the other soldiers. I understood he was loosing him mind; he sometimes started to tell me something and then he forgot.
I started to see him only walking and I knew how he loved his bike. He told me that his daughters forbid him to ride his bike as they were worried he could fall apart. In the last times, every time I drove to the village for some reason or when I came back from work in the evening…I saw him walking on the sidewalk…going “downtown” or coming back in the direction of his house.
I ‘ve told to myself that I had to grab a bottle of milk from the farm and go to visit him…or I’ve thought I had to stop “one of these days when I see him on the sidewalk”…I was always running somewhere..and I said to myself..well, next time.
I didn’t have a next time…the other day he walked to the cemetery to visit his wife and he died on her grave. Now I have his certificates of the Nation Patriots he borrowed me to write the article about his life. When I read the words and the phrases about freedom and sacrifice I think that we owe so much to that generation that we’re almost loosing.
Yesterday at his funeral there were many hunch and limping men…they could barely walk, but they hold a very high and I suppose very heavy flag with the colors of our country and the blue and white Veterans’ sign. They stood up bringing the mourning bandage. One of them at a certain point, before the end of the ceremony, read the “Prayer of the Soldier” and then a trumpet started to play.
It seems like in this life there are some things that are so much about life going on, not stopping that it doesn’t seem true to me.
He has always bring the flags and it’s hard to think he won’t be there next time.