Fai piano, i bimbi grandi non piangono

The above is a quote from one of my favourite Zucchero songs. Granted, most Zucchero songs are among my favourites, but this one, called ´Diamante´, has a special place in the ranking. The song, written by Zucchero and an Italian singer-songwriter called Francesco DeGregori, is about the death of Zucchero’s grandmother, whose name was Diamante. Although my Italian isn’t as good as it should be, I believe a fair enough translation of the sentence above, which in the song is whispered several times during the bridge, would be `Softly now, big kids don’t cry`, which I think is one of the best descriptions of how one feels when someone close passes away.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, my grandfather died. He was 92 years and 22 days old. He had been ill for months, if not years. And in the past few weeks he had been visibly getting weaker and weaker. Basically, everybody, including himself, knew he was going to die soon, and everybody, including himself, were ´at peace with it´. When thinking about older people passing away, I always remember a Billy Christal movie I once saw in which he plays a comedian getting older. Somewhere in the movie his mother dies, and during a service for her he starts telling funny stories about her before breaking down and saying `She was 99 and she died too young!’.

It’s a pretty good line, but in this case I don’t think it’s appropriate. My grandfather died without too much pain, with dignity, with his mind still in excellent shape, and in the room that had been his home for the past 2 years. He was tired, he was done, there really wasn’t anything left he was waiting for, so he gave up and stepped out. My grandmother, who died in 2002, died in much the same way, and although there’s a lot of comfort in there for those left behind, there’s also the problem of having to combine sadness with realization that there really wasn’t another option.

As a kid with a working mom, I spent loads of time with them when I was younger, and I remember that as being in this big hot bath of complete and unconditional love. The funny thing about my grandparents was the difference between them as parents and the way they were with me and my nephews and nieces. They were both raised in the early 20th century and both strict Catholics, so you can imagine that as parents they weren’t always the most adapted to their 1960’s, soon-to-be-atheists, kids. As grandparents, however, they were simply the best: up until the very last moment, if you wanted to see my grandfather smile all you had to do was mention one of his grandchildren.

In the past few years I’d visit him usually once a week, and though the fluffy warmness of my grandmother had passed on, it was replaced by the sort of grown up discussions I never had with my grandmother. We used to talk about politics, news, history, sports and whatever else was going on. Also, clearly showing that we’re related, we spent quite a lot of time making jokes. His favourite material was money. Whenever there was a news story about stock prices falling, he would look at me semi-seriously and say “Don’t worry, sold everything”. “Phew” my mom and me would reply, “thank god the family fortune is safe!”.

The last time I saw him was last Monday but he was hardly able to stay awake for more than a few minutes. The day before I went to see him after work and we spent about twenty minutes talking, somehow ending up talking about food. He asked if I had eaten already, I said I hadn’t, and he then suggested we should get Chinese food together, ignoring for a moment he hadn’t eaten solid food in two weeks. My family doesn’t have many traditions but joking until your very last breath, thank god, is one of them. Eventually we moved on to my grandmothers cooking, and thinking about her food, but more importantly her, he boasted the biggest smile I have seen on him in the past month.

Now, personally I’m not a big philosopher concerning life and death. I don’t believe there is a heaven, and if there is one Mark Twain was probably right in saying he’d prefer heaven for the climate and hell for the company, but my grandfather did, and who knows, maybe he was right. Or maybe the late Dutch songwriter Bram Vermeulen had it right when he wrote

And when I die
Don’t cry
I’m not really dead
You should know
It’s just a body
That I left behind
Dead I’ll only be
Once you’ve forgotten about me.

And if that’s the case both my grandparents will live on for a long, long time.

Oh, and for the record: big kids most definitely do cry.