life can be sweet and amazing

today marks the seventh anniversary that my dad passed away, and i have decided that today life can be sweet and amazing.

he's been on my mind a lot lately and i am always amazed at how fresh that hurt can be just in remembering the final days we had him with us. but aside from witnessing this event and remembering his final moments, i can also recall the solidarity of family and the moments of joy we experienced.

and here are the things i like to remember of that time...

my uncles sam and tony having to share a bed (something i'm sure they hadn't done in decades), and uncle tony with his silk pyjamas that we dubbed him Hef. mena's new luggage full of new clothes because of her last minute decision to come, so her sister isabel packed/purchased a bag for her...and then when she opened the luggage, seeing that everything was once size to small. lui, coming up to me the morning of the funeral saying to me...why didn't you tell me i was getting fat....and when he opened up his jacket, i could see his vest stretched tightly across his stomach, full of the truckloads of food our family and friends brought over to us.

then there was me, gina, lui and mena sharing a room - me and gina on the double fouton, mena on the single bed and lui on the floor between us. we couldn't sleep...we kept making eachother laugh because i don't think we've ever shared such small confies with eachother...ever. and linda, sleeping just outside our room on a mattress, propped up with the big pillow, yelling at us to shut up. good times amid such painful ones. a truly unique experience.

and i won't mention the sopressata...not really.

i like too that i'm coming to a point in my life where those last few years of struggle for my dad are not the first things i remember about him anymore. someone asked me if i can still hear his voice and i laughed because the man barely said anything, really, except to grill me on where i was going. i recently connected with an old friend on facebook and she said to me...oh my god you're dad and his questions! where you go, who you go with, why, what for? clearly, she remembers him too.

there's a guy at work who (almost) sneezes as loud as dad did, and i find myself sometimes shaking my head quickly and clicking my tongue to represent the words 'no'. and i notice i rub my hands like he did too. when did i start doing that?


i remember my dad sitting in his chair near the windows in the living room, spying (or as he would think was just looking out the window), giving my mom a play by play action of what was going on outside. and one summer, some kids raided our garden and the next night, my dad sat in the garage waiting for them to come back (and well, they didn't). he was so pissed off. i liked how he would immitate cory hart and do a terrible job of it, and how we would come home and see him sitting in his chair, with headphones on listening to madonna. he also thought he was funny singing monday monday the way that he did, where his next lines were tuesday tuesday...wednesday wednesday. i remember being a little girl and going for a walk with my parents after dinner (something we did often) and walking over to auntie teresa and uncle frank's house where they'd have coffee and play scoopa.

he drank red wine with diet coke and white wine with 7-up. he worshipped his garden. he started wearing jeans at 65, when he retired, and he thought it disgracefull that i would dare drive my car to get from point a to point b. he fancied himself a mechanic until we realised for years he had not been doing such a good job and thus turning our dodge omni into the death trap. he didn't like pasta left overs (i don't either), we fought over the end piece of mom's bread preferring the crusty bits over the soft ones. his favourite tv show was the 6 pm news, followed closely by the young and the restless or one life to live. he also really liked watching the original 90210. he had a love hate relationship with our bird charlie, hating him for the dirt that animals bring into the house yet playing with him when he thought no one was looking. poor charlie died when dad was home alone and he said to him 'charlie, don't die now...they'll think i killed you'.


his guilty pleasure was frying up a large piece of bacon (not the strips but a big chunk) and eating it with some of mom's bread and a tomato salad, with a glass of water or a can of diet pepsi. then following it up with a cup of espresso and a digestive. he also loved mom's lemon meringue pie (and well, i still do)

dad, i think of you when i smell aftershave because i remember sitting in the bathroom with you while you shaved when you got home from work. i think of you when people have gas and you would yell out 'trumpo di cuolo, senito di corpo'. i think of you when i reheat left over pasta, when i have to take my car in for an oil change, when i tuck into mom's pie, and when i add copious amounts of garlic and onion into my pasta sauce because i know you hated it. i can't listen to 'sunglasses at night' without smiling, and when i don't understand why someone wants to do something, 'what for' comes out of my mouth before i can even think about stopping it.


there's no where in london i can go to remember you properly except for here, and well, its publicly, but that's ok too since the people reading this are the ones that mean the most to me. so dad, i miss you, but know i still talk about you all the time and think about you often. and even though i was a complete shithead half the time and we often didn't see eye to eye, i'm still your little girl and love you very much. xoxoxo