A Small Tribute.

It's been some time since I've been able to make a post here, work and life ramping up as they have, but the recent passing of my grandfather has made me want to pay a tribute to him in my own way.



I got the call on Wednesday to say that he had passed and at first it was something that didn't register completely.  I'd been in New Zealand on work and it took quite a while for it to sink in properly.  Working as I was created a sort of buffer to the news.  The reality of it, I think, finally hit me when I stopped for a short break to get some lunch.  The thing I remember most was that I suddenly realised that I was operating on autopilot.  I didn't really remember much of the few hours leading up to that point and I wasn't eating lunch because I was hungry, I was eating because it was what I was supposed to do with whatever it was I had ordered for lunch.  It tasted like ash in my mouth and I just went through the motions without any other thought.  When I went back to work, I actually had some work to do in a communications room. Which was small and isolated and I remember that as I was working on a small network device, I had started to cry.

The thing I will remember most about my grandfather was that he was always smiling.  I don't think I can ever remember a time when he wasn't.  He was always so happy to see any of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren and would always listen attentively whenever we had anything new to tell him.

Over the years, he taught me so many things, from the making a good wine to how to play a game of Scopa but the most important thing he taught me was the importance of family.  Coming from Italy, family was very important to him.  He came to Australia and built a new life, far from everything he had ever known, and a close knit and loving family to share in that life.  He instilled that love of family in the first generation, his children, and they, in turn, instilled it in the next and it is even being taught to the newest generation, his great-grandchildren.  He taught us that, while all of us might not be able to make it to all of the celebrations, we are still all there, in the love that he had for us and we had for him.

So I take comfort from that.  He is not gone, just walking a different path.  His love for his family is still with today.  I won't say goodbye to you Nonno, because I know we will meet again, I will just say, "Safe journey".