03-20-2019, 06:18 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-20-2019, 06:18 PM by gayprojectforum.)
Hello Project,
I minimize compliments for the forum, which is truly unique. I say nothing more. I wrote to you to give the Forum my small contribution.
I’m 49 years old, an uncertain age in which one is neither old nor young, in other times I would have been called mature, but let us leave the definitions apart. I lost my father when I was 37 years old. My mother had died of cancer when I was 16 and I have a rather confused memory of her, linked above all to her illness. In practice I lived for 21 years with my father and it is to him that I would like to dedicate this writing, on Saint Joseph's day, Father's Day, also because his name too was Joseph.
I have often read, both in the forum and elsewhere, stories of family misunderstandings, rejection of gay sons, escaping from the family but nevertheless I found a real mentor in my father, even with regards to my being gay.
After my mother's funeral, we found ourselves, in the evening, alone in the house with the television off, sitting facing each other and I saw my father crying in despair. Of this I have a very clear memory. He and my mother really loved each other. During her illness he followed her with the utmost attention trying to make her suffer as little as possible and she told him so many beautiful things to try not to make him collapse psychologically.
On the evening of the funeral, when I saw my father truly desperate, I hugged him like Mom used to do and I held him tight, I was 16 but I knew he would calm down like that. He told me:
"Let's go out!"
I nodded yes and went to get my coat, because it was January. We walked a lot, but slowly, without saying a word, we passed in front of the hospital where mum was dead and even there we didn't say a word, it was like mom was among us. We returned home and Dad went straight to the kitchen to make me something to eat, but I told him:
"Sit there, I'll take care of it."
But we prepared everything working together, then we went to bed, but we didn't sleep, neither he nor I. The next day he had to think of many bureaucratic things, death certificates and communications to stop the payment of my mother's pensions and her salary.
I had to go to school. My mates and teachers made me understand that they loved me and I tried to get back into the ordinary school mechanism as soon as possible. I had known Biagio (a fancy name), a guy a year older than me, and I had lost my mind for him, he was serious, he loved me, he was never excessive, and then he was a beautiful guy, or at least he seemed beautiful to me, in short he was the guy of my dreams. I could saw him only at school, there was no occasion to study together because he was older than me and attended the next class and this made me sad.
At home, the relationship with my father was good, as it had always been. He used to gave me maximum freedom, he trusted me 100%, sometimes he gave me some responsibilities: to go to the Local Health Unit or to the accountant. As soon as I turned 18, he gave me a rechargeable credit card and every month he put some money into it and he never asked me what I did with it.
I never thought that my father could remarry or fall in love with another woman and in fact it never happened. He lived for me, trying never to be invasive, to stay at a distance, to leave me free. Some evenings I came home late, even very late, but he didn't say anything to me.
I had arrived at the age of 21, I was in my third year at university and my story with Biagio had become the most beautiful thing in my life, but just then a terrible thing happened, Biagio lost both his parents in a car accident, he felt destroyed . After the funeral he didn't know how to untangle all his concrete problems, because he was an only child and had no idea what to do with the inheritance and all the bureaucratic and economic problems. I talked to my father about it and that's how my father met Biagio.
Dad called him on the phone and we met in three. Biagio trusted my father, at the beginning just because he was my father but then they quickly reached a very frank understanding.
Once the legal questions of the inheritance were settled, the economic ones remained, Biagio had inherited his parents' house, but he was still at university, he didn't work and he didn't know how to go on himself, in practice he would have had to sell the house to finish his studies. Biagio's relatives did not want problems of any kind. Dad realized the situation and I also think he realized that Biagio was my boyfriend.
One day he tells me:
"He can stay with us, so he can rent the house to get a small income to finish his studies ... what do you say?"
I answer him only:
"It would be a great thing!"
Dad calls him on the phone and invites him to dinner with us, Biagio accepts. Dad prepares a superlative dinner, he wants Biagio to feel at ease. When Biagio arrives Dad treats him like a son, with the utmost naturalness. Biagio feels himself once again inserted into a family atmosphere and is visibly happy, then dad tells him about his proposal and Biagio says yes. Then I get up and hug him, a little like we used to do when we were alone. Biagio is clearly embarrassed but Dad says:
"Don't worry, no problem for me!"
That was our coming out.
From that evening we slept in the same room and after a few weeks in the same bed. Dad had started working overtime to bring a little more money home. Biagio worked hard to study and graduated after a few months. He got an excellent job offer, but he should have moved to another city and he dropped the offer, then opted for a much less qualified job that would have allowed him to stay with us. I noticed that Biagio did not want to contribute to the home budget but we established together the three of us that, with the exception of a personal fund of 300 euros a month for small expenses, we would have put our earnings together, as it happens in a real family.
We made strong savings and put aside some money that would have allowed us to buy a small apartment to live in as a couple, if Biagio had had other job offers. In the meantime I graduated in a field very close to that of Biagio and after about six months we found a rare opportunity to be able to work both of us in another region but with excellent job prospects. But Biagio didn't want to buy a house, I didn't understand why and he told me:
"We have to rent a slightly larger apartment and Dad will come to live with us! So he can rent the apartment where we are now and we will be able to reduce the costs and in a little while we will be able to buy a bigger apartment to stay there all together the three of us."
And so we did.
Dad had retired in the meantime and he was at home, doing the shopping, cooking, keeping the house tidy, we saw him grow old but we loved him and he was happy to be with us and he often said so.
Then Biagio understood that Dad would have liked to live a little out of town. When Dad was 67 we bought an independent house with 5000 meters of land around. Dad was happy, he had built a garden, he had designing it in advance with criteria of maximum rationality, he cultivated a lot of things, we didn’t spend money on fruit and vegetables and we were sure that Dad would have brought us only genuine food.
It went like this until Dad turned 70, then he got sick and we soon realized that there would be nothing to do, he understood it too, but he often told us that he was not afraid of death and that his life had been a full and happy life. Biagio has done for my father what I believe no son would do for his own. We saw him go away quietly while holding hands each other, after telling us he loved us. I saw Biagio cry really violently, because he felt like an orphan for the second time.
12 years have passed since then. Biagio has kept all my father's things as real relics, especially the photographs he had taken of him. For us he was and still is a model of life, that's why Dad Joseph will always remain in our hearts.