February 12th is an extremely difficult day for me, as it has been four years since my Nonno passed away. Everything I do is in memory of Nonno. Below is an excerpt of a speech I gave honoring my Nonno at one of his services:
I have always told people that my Nonno is my favorite person and my favorite teacher. I’ll tell everyone I meet how much I love my Nonno and Nonna. Nonno and I shared a love of ancient Egyptian history and this common interest created such a bond between us. My best childhood memories are the two of us looking through one of his hundreds of books in the basement while we sat at his desk or on the couch. Half of the books in my own collection are actually his. Either because he gave them to me, or because I just took them.
The best day of my life was when we finally got to walk the streets of Pompeii together. I had been waiting my whole life for those couple of hours. My sister said to me “he had been waiting his whole life for someone to care about that stuff as much as him” and she was so right.
My cousin said to me “eravete – e sempre sarete un team bellissimo.” You have been and always will be the most beautiful team. And we are. We are the book hoarding, history loving, rock collecting, Italian speaking, Pompeii exploring, drive the rest of the family crazy in museums team. And we always will be.
While there are no words to describe my Nonno, I want to share something I wrote over 25 years ago, that he still has proudly displayed:
My Nonno
My Nonno is so funny
He is very very silly
I love my Nonno very much
——
I’ve been listening to the song “Il tuo sguardo manca” by Il Volo a lot leading up to today because the song really describes a lot of my emotions about my Nonno’s death. This line in particular: “ma non passa un attimo, che il tuo sguardo manca in ogni strada, ogni città, dovunque vado” hits especially hard because it is so true.
This whole website, my Instagram page, and everything I do is in memory of Nonno.