My best friend took a trip to Italy in 2014. He begged me to go along with him—sort of fulfilling a promise we’d made to each other years ago—but I couldn’t swing the time. While he was there, he met a young woman, an aide to his project. She needed a father figure to mentor her, and he needed, well, someone to love. His emails were full of her. I’d seldom witnessed him so smitten. They parted friends, and stayed in contact after his return home. Then he found out he had Stage 4 small cell lung cancer—six months, tops.
I went out to see him, and we went on a guy’s jag for a few days, as was our wont—food, drink, and what have you, leaving the womenfolk at home. He was well into his second round of chemo and was a wreck. Still, every evening he spent his time emailing his Italian friend, preoccupied to the point of distraction. Finally, I said, “We need some music here,” and put on Divenire, conveniently on my iPod.
He looked up, astonished, “How did you know that’s what I wanted to hear?” I didn’t; it was a guess. Ludovico was one of the things she’d taught him.
He died the following March, and a day does not go by that I don’t miss him, my friend of fifty years, and there isn’t a time that I hear Divenire that I’m not reminded of his unlikely love for a beautiful young woman, and her love for him.
This song really does conjure a story such as yours. What a great memory.
My best friend took a trip to Italy in 2014. He begged me to go along with him—sort of fulfilling a promise we’d made to each other years ago—but I couldn’t swing the time. While he was there, he met a young woman, an aide to his project. She needed a father figure to mentor her, and he needed, well, someone to love. His emails were full of her. I’d seldom witnessed him so smitten. They parted friends, and stayed in contact after his return home. Then he found out he had Stage 4 small cell lung cancer—six months, tops.
I went out to see him, and we went on a guy’s jag for a few days, as was our wont—food, drink, and what have you, leaving the womenfolk at home. He was well into his second round of chemo and was a wreck. Still, every evening he spent his time emailing his Italian friend, preoccupied to the point of distraction. Finally, I said, “We need some music here,” and put on Divenire, conveniently on my iPod.
He looked up, astonished, “How did you know that’s what I wanted to hear?” I didn’t; it was a guess. Ludovico was one of the things she’d taught him.
He died the following March, and a day does not go by that I don’t miss him, my friend of fifty years, and there isn’t a time that I hear Divenire that I’m not reminded of his unlikely love for a beautiful young woman, and her love for him.