We had had been talking a lot about planting vineyards, he didn't agree, perhaps because he thought it was a terribly demanding choice, it was a choice for life and perhaps this scared him, he didn't feel like a farmer, and in any case he was right: planting a vineyard is like marrying the ground where it is.
Son of a teacher, he had spent his childhood in Coldipeccio, a small gathering on the border between Umbria and Marche which right in the 70s and 80s was emerging from the Middle Ages. Graduated in chemistry, he loved building and making firewood from the forest. He was an employee at the hospital, but I always thought that was a coverage.
I miss him, whenI'm looking for something, when the roof tiles move, when a crack runs into a wall, a father represents security, a rock to hold onto when you're afraid of drowning, when you have to ask for advice. Today I am a father myself, the wheel of life has turned, from someone's son I have become someone else's father and I don't feel like climbing on that roof to fix those tiles. I don't feel safe, I will do it anyway, I did it and I would do it again, because I have to and I can't go back down. Because I have to protect and defend my family, it's my job.
My father had bought this property, he was the one to have seen here an oasis of peace where to raise a family, when there was little more than a ruin. He planted the olive trees, the orchard around the house, he was the one to build the house where me and my family live. I owe him so much. It is true, we always argued, because he had a strong character and it was difficult to emerge with my ideas. I would have done a few things differently, others that I harshly criticized I find myself doing them again in the same way.
He was sick, really sick and at that point when you see a person suffering like that it's hard to say whether it's better to hope he lives or let him die. My father died on 26.January 2013, ten hours after my daughter’s birth, he only had time to meet her through a picture.
His name was Lorenzo Cruciani, he was the bravest person I have ever known.