I have already tried to start post this a few times, but I had not yet developed well in my mind.
Come back from vacation I went to find a couple of uncles who had not seen for many years. In reality they are of great-uncles, rather than in later years, much of the older relatives that I still have the good fortune to have. A stroke of luck but I could not fully understand, or at least is what I think I realized it. Maybe too late.
I lost my grandparents when I was a teenager and then I never had any of the key figures, apart from my parents during my period of maturation.
When you are a child alive grandparents or older relatives, as affectionate playmates alternative. They stay with you when mom and dad are working, they take you to the park or see a museum or show. Sometimes they teach you something about life, how they lived their stories telling you that at your age you seem more the product of fantasy that does not really lived experiences. They tell you stories with happy endings and protect your children. We pamper you and spoil you enjoy their presence by naive carefree, without thinking about the day when there will be no more because maybe you do not even yet fully understood the meaning of death.
Yet, when the natural course of events no obstacles, are the first people who are lost. Often this is one of the first moments when you learn to know the pain that you are facing in life. Learn what it means to miss someone without ever really being able to fill with something else. In a sense you feel a lot more emotion than you know that you understand and explain. Maybe you start to get a few more questions about the meaning of life, the meaning of death, what you choose and what you have to accept.
When, 14 years, I felt this emptiness inside, I felt the emotional value, but I did not understand what wealth they had lost. How many things could have been handed down. How many lessons, many values, how many life experiences to learn from and avoid making mistakes in turn.
They have experienced important moments in history, which helped produce the present world and that too easily ignored and forgotten.
The history that we learn from school books is another matter. From there you can learn about the basic events are considered, those who have "developed" or changed the world, but history is not made only by great leaders, kings and scientists. The story is composed of a vast multitude of small, large, lives lived quietly, facing life everyday with the means available, with intelligence, heart and a little luck.
why it is important to absorb and soak up everything you can from whoever is coming at the end of its experience and has already tasted what it means to really live.
with my grandparents and I did not have time to do it. And now ... now I have lost another opportunity.
I had already decided to be a bit 'of trying to reconstruct the past of my family with some anecdote, genealogical data, photographs and little else but eyewitness accounts are the most valuable source that must be seized.
I went to see these uncles, but faced to them, to the awe I felt for their age and lack of diligence with which I got to know them in time for their current problems, I did not felt a storm of questions. We talked only of trivial or circumstantial arguments.
The thing I feel inside of me was blocking their discomfort to be at that point in life. A point where you regret the past, you feel alone because most of the people who populate your life are gone. You feel tired and the forces are less every day. I was afraid to ask him when they were young, how they lived through the war, how his life would have faced further open this wound in my heart. Why all the difficulties would certainly re-emerged moments of joy and true happiness. That fullness that at some point you seem finally dried. I was afraid to talk about these things, come in 90 years, could do more harm than good.
Maybe not, maybe they were still happy, but I did not felt the same.
And so I left with my questions in his pocket, along with a couple of precious documents dating back to the "Nazi" as he called him. With names and dates, but no real story to collect and keep forever.
do not know if I will have another time to do those questions. What I know is that now I understand what that really felt deep void at age 14.
Come back from vacation I went to find a couple of uncles who had not seen for many years. In reality they are of great-uncles, rather than in later years, much of the older relatives that I still have the good fortune to have. A stroke of luck but I could not fully understand, or at least is what I think I realized it. Maybe too late.
I lost my grandparents when I was a teenager and then I never had any of the key figures, apart from my parents during my period of maturation.
When you are a child alive grandparents or older relatives, as affectionate playmates alternative. They stay with you when mom and dad are working, they take you to the park or see a museum or show. Sometimes they teach you something about life, how they lived their stories telling you that at your age you seem more the product of fantasy that does not really lived experiences. They tell you stories with happy endings and protect your children. We pamper you and spoil you enjoy their presence by naive carefree, without thinking about the day when there will be no more because maybe you do not even yet fully understood the meaning of death.
Yet, when the natural course of events no obstacles, are the first people who are lost. Often this is one of the first moments when you learn to know the pain that you are facing in life. Learn what it means to miss someone without ever really being able to fill with something else. In a sense you feel a lot more emotion than you know that you understand and explain. Maybe you start to get a few more questions about the meaning of life, the meaning of death, what you choose and what you have to accept.
When, 14 years, I felt this emptiness inside, I felt the emotional value, but I did not understand what wealth they had lost. How many things could have been handed down. How many lessons, many values, how many life experiences to learn from and avoid making mistakes in turn.
They have experienced important moments in history, which helped produce the present world and that too easily ignored and forgotten.
The history that we learn from school books is another matter. From there you can learn about the basic events are considered, those who have "developed" or changed the world, but history is not made only by great leaders, kings and scientists. The story is composed of a vast multitude of small, large, lives lived quietly, facing life everyday with the means available, with intelligence, heart and a little luck.
why it is important to absorb and soak up everything you can from whoever is coming at the end of its experience and has already tasted what it means to really live.
with my grandparents and I did not have time to do it. And now ... now I have lost another opportunity.
I had already decided to be a bit 'of trying to reconstruct the past of my family with some anecdote, genealogical data, photographs and little else but eyewitness accounts are the most valuable source that must be seized.
I went to see these uncles, but faced to them, to the awe I felt for their age and lack of diligence with which I got to know them in time for their current problems, I did not felt a storm of questions. We talked only of trivial or circumstantial arguments.
The thing I feel inside of me was blocking their discomfort to be at that point in life. A point where you regret the past, you feel alone because most of the people who populate your life are gone. You feel tired and the forces are less every day. I was afraid to ask him when they were young, how they lived through the war, how his life would have faced further open this wound in my heart. Why all the difficulties would certainly re-emerged moments of joy and true happiness. That fullness that at some point you seem finally dried. I was afraid to talk about these things, come in 90 years, could do more harm than good.
Maybe not, maybe they were still happy, but I did not felt the same.
And so I left with my questions in his pocket, along with a couple of precious documents dating back to the "Nazi" as he called him. With names and dates, but no real story to collect and keep forever.
do not know if I will have another time to do those questions. What I know is that now I understand what that really felt deep void at age 14.
