Chapter 34 What Marco Left Me
There is a great difference between saying farewell and learning to live with someone’s absence. A farewell lasts only one day. The absence remains every day. After Marco’s death, everything changed. Not only within our family, but also deep within me. The world simply continued moving forward. People went to work. They made plans. They laughed. Celebrated birthdays. And looked toward the future. For me, however, time seemed to have stopped. At every family gathering, one chair remained empty. At every birthday, one voice was missing. And in every joyful moment came that brief, silent realization: Marco should have been here. Slowly, I began to understand that grief is not only pain. Grief is also a form of love. A love that no longer has a place to express itself. At first, I thought I would mainly have to learn to live with that emptiness.
But over the years, I discovered that Marco had not left me only an empty chair. He had given me so much more. Some people leave behind a great fortune. Others, magnificent buildings. Still others write books or make inventions that outlive them. Marco left me something else. He taught me to look at life differently. That may sound strange. Normally, the father teaches his children. And yet, over the years, I understood that my son had also become one of my greatest teachers. He taught me to look toward the future without fear. At a time when many people still saw computers as little more than complicated machines, he already saw endless possibilities. Where I saw a screen, he saw a window open onto a new world. Where others saw limits, he saw opportunities.
He was curious. Always. When he did not understand something, he wanted to examine it until he had fully uncovered its secrets. When he believed in an idea, he devoted himself to it completely. That was a quality I admired enormously in him. He was never satisfied with a superficial answer. He wanted to know why. And above all… how it could be done better. That way of thinking kept me young too. Thanks to Marco, I remained open to change. I learned to listen to younger generations. I discovered that age must never be a limitation as long as curiosity remains alive. We spent countless hours speaking about technology. The Internet. Three-dimensional visualization. Software. Possibilities that most people still regarded as science fiction at the time. Sometimes I did not immediately understand everything he tried to explain to me. But I always understood his enthusiasm.
And enthusiasm is contagious. That is why I was never afraid of innovation. Quite the opposite. I always tried to welcome new developments with sincere interest. And I owe him so much for that. But Marco taught me something else, something far more important. He taught me that love is not always expressed through grand words. We did not tell each other every day how much we loved one another. That simply was not who we were. Our love lived in the simplest things. In our journeys together. In a single look that said everything. In a hand resting for a moment on a shoulder. In searching together for the solution to a problem. In an espresso drunk side by side in silence. Today, I understand that those simple moments were precisely the most precious of all, because they were genuine. They needed no applause. No audience. Only two people who understood one another deeply.
An image I like to look at when we remember Marco.
From those memories, something slowly grew that, during the first years of my grief, I would scarcely have believed possible. Gratitude. Gratitude that I was able to have Marco in my life for nearly thirty-seven years. Because he was my son. And because he will remain so forever. Gratitude because we were not only father and son. We were also friends. Traveling companions. Colleagues. How many fathers can say they were fortunate enough to experience that? Not many. I can. And I will remain grateful for it until the end of my life. Today, Marco’s chair is still empty. But in my heart, he is completely present. Not only as the memory of what I lost. But as a living force that reminds me every day how precious love truly is. The pain of his absence has not disappeared. But the way I carried that pain slowly changed.
Even now, the old impulse sometimes rises in me: I must tell Marco about this. At the sight of a new technology, a family event, or an unexpected idea, for a fraction of a second he still seems simply within reach. Only afterwards does the realization come. That brief moment hurts, but I cherish it too. It proves that our relationship has not been reduced to 27 August 2009. He remains present in the way I look at things, ask questions, and dare to begin something again. I imagine his reaction, his rapid words, and that smile which already revealed that, in his mind, he was three steps ahead.
You live on, Marco. In Chiara and Laura. In Michael and Dorina. In the people whose lives you touched. And in me as well: every time I remain curious, want to understand something new, or refuse to believe something is impossible. Perhaps that is the greatest legacy a person can leave: not possessions, not a building, not a business, but a way of looking at the world that lives on in others. For that, my dear son, I will be grateful to you until my last day.