A Decrease font size.A Reset font size.A Increase font size.My father left with the hottest breath, like the one mentioned by the dying Emperor Hadrian in the Memoirs of Yourcenar.And he was, for us, a refined emperor.Humanity, pride, weaknesses.Like Adriano, in the same way he expected "so little from the human condition" that "the periods of happiness, the partial progress, the efforts of recovery and continuity" seemed to him "as many prodigies that almost compensate for the immense mass of evils, failures, neglect and error ".Farewell to the director Emanuele GiacoiaHe was attached to this world, albeit crooked and full of carelessness.Glued to life, strong as an octopus, tenacious as a conscrictor, at a certain point death would have seemed to him the most elegant solution.Animula vagula blandula / Hospes comesque corporis / Quae nunc abibis in loca / Pallidula rigida nudula / Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos.Little now seemed to be his soul in that shrunken body of the last few days.Lost and sweet, yes, companion and guest of the body, while she decided to go down to those "colorless, arduous and bare places", without those "usual amusements": American cigarettes, loden in winter at Caffè Bastone, the blue shirts, the books of the great literature.His work.The brown tip of his fingers, from the butts he was holding in his hand even when he was almost asleep.A Stop without a filter, a Pall Mall were always on that I remember.Even one afternoon on a Sunday in July, when he got stuck in the lift of the Rai headquarters in via Montesanto, in Cosenza, which he had actually opened in '58 as a new house could be opened.In order not to disturb him, he avoided pressing the alarm button, starting to read the newspaper, thinking to himself: someone will notice the breakdown, my disappearance.Incredulous, an hour later the technicians heard him say, seeing him come out on the landing, "good afternoon, thank you".We children and wife, Pietra, were already at the seaside.It was the bold time of holidays that began in June to end in October, when we moved like adventurers to India with trunks and elephants.We went to a hotel in the evening to hear him on the phone, and his feats were heroic for us.But the elevator, a radio link with the Americas, the reports of the murdered dead, of the kidnapped, could perfectly mix with those of the menu of a restaurant in Sila, of a dinner with such important colleagues who came from Rome, based on "mushrooms extraordinary ".Or our flooded home.He had a particular talent for forgetting open taps, so on his return it was possible that he would come across the corridor with the Venetian high water.He resolved by immediately closing the door, waiting in the hotel for events to change.But he then told it, candidly, to my mother with the "bulletin" of the sunset on the beach, we all around the cabin of the Miramare beach in Soverato.Those long years of childhood seemed to never end, full as they were already of the sadness and fears that we all have on this planet and in this life that nothing spares us but which, despite the efforts, has a beautiful sense of mystery and often a nice load of joys.He was inside this universal feature film.As in a family epic, in fact, half father, half cigarette, and then gradually father-Olivetti Lettera 32, father-Rai, father-All football minute by minute, father-Ninetieth, father-cannelloni with bechamel, father- whole box of oranges in the evening.But also half father and half mother, because his being with us was sweet.Is rich.Community, equal, democratic.Listening to Pablo, Rimmel or La Locomotiva, or the latest Deep Purple LP, that Smoke on the water that drove us crazy and jump while he smiled explaining to Pietra, a revolutionary with a Di Giacomo soul and Eduardo heart, how much they were. these are good here and not only his Neapolitan singers and poets.He smoked, my father, looking at us and loving us sideways.Meanwhile looking for a synonym for what he was writing.Late at night that ticking sounded like a distant dream, a garrison of peace, a UN buffer against the dark forces.It was him, in his father's scented white tank top, his blonde, the ashtray, the plate with the last of the orange peel.He was little with us, it was always little.But there was, and that was always enough.We were afraid of monsters and ghosts, because we secretly read his books, those of HP Lovecraft or Henry James, and that man, my father, so dear, also represented a mountain range that sheltered from all the mysterious winds. nocturnal.He loved writing in the kitchen, his world.“Where's Daddy?” We asked.And mom, dry, brilliant: "With her head in the refrigerator".The balcony always wide open, even in winter.He overlooked the courtyard, on a narrow view and listening to a lost world, that segment of space and time that kept him company every night.From there, like today that has gone, in the summer, the heat, the blue above the roofs, the birds that in the city now sing only at night, but also the echo of Pietra's voice when he called the gathered in the morning before going to school.He was always accompanying us, with his blue American Ford approved for six but where we five children and almost all the kids in the building entered.I remember the expression on our first day of elementary school.He knew that the time of innocence was over, or nearly so, that we were entering the world of worries.He suffered from it, I knew it, I felt it.Therefore I never told him about that teacher who apologized for fascism and Mussolini, and who opposed this violence with the blank delivery of the themes, which was followed by the blows.My father had taught us that we had to resist, and so I did.He lived through the war, the birth of the Republic, the riots in Reggio Calabria (how many cries, he did not return home for over a month), even Casalino at Palazzo Chigi, the pandemic and Sanremo without an audience, and in the hospital bed until the other day the concern for the fate of Italy after 25 September 2022. However, he hoped.And he dreamed.He has always done so, and always going further, where no one has the courage to set foot anymore: the license to drive a glider, for example, the dive from a cliff, a mid-August stop on the shore of a desert sea, in Locride del Confino di Pavese, he told me, a dance on a roundabout, the great beauty of mother in a final embrace, going into space, even simulating him as his friend Piero Angela.Or a new trip to London: "When I get well we will go to see Emanuele, let's see if my nephew will be able to take me to that little place where I ate turtle broth in 1976 on the occasion of the Anglo-Italian football tournament".So you, slowly: "Dad, it won't exist anymore, it's been almost fifty years".And he, “big beast, I was joking.But a peppered mussels yes.Also nearby ”.I watched him sleep during these long months of illness."Four times, four times," he repeated before leaving.Perhaps a game he played as a child, in his Umago d'Istria as a chubby boy with a financier father and a Neapolitan mother, world champion of kid in the oven and pastiera.Then came the ninetieth minute, and that clicking noise like in the change of a slide: from his hands that shaped a nativity scene with mountains of paper mache and us little ones around full of joy and enchantment, to his hands tormented by needles of a hospital.And now that they cross.Cold.But he was one of those who remain standing, my father.As a great piece by De Gregori says, among those who have dreams like lighthouses and eyes that are alert and attentive and wild like animals, while observing a precise star among millions.He died as he was standing, my father.Like Hadrian, my kind emperor turned one last time.Or four, as he repeated.It must have been those moments he still wanted to savor, as he did minute by minute in all of his adventurous and powerful and sweetly cheeky 93 years.One last moment to look together at “the familiar shores, the things that we will certainly never see again”.And finally trying to enter death with open eyes.Hoping for a broad "welcome, Emanuele".COPYRIGHT Il Quotidiano del Sud © - REPRODUCTION RESERVEDFacebook Other Facebook Basilicata Facebook Calabria Facebook Campania Twitter YoutubeSubscribers to Il Quotidiano del Sud, you can consult them on pc, tablet and smatphone.