The history of the past century is the history of my father, who died a few days ago at the age of 93. His story has much to say about Italy in the 20th century. A few lines are not enough, obviously, and perhaps these moments immediately following his death are not even the most appropriate for such an effort. But his story, for better or for worse, embodies the life of an era and the feeling of many, and certain passages of it are well worth telling.


He was born in 1922 in Rognano, a small village in the province of Pavia, a few kilometers from the Certosa. He entered a world already ending, a civilization whose destruction—the most radical and dramatic step of our era—was already underway. His father was a farmer: many times I heard them describe the life of those days, a farm life that, despite technological developments, had remained essentially the same since the time of Virgil’s Eclogues and Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs.

Those lands bordering the province of Milan had been shaped by the monks of the Middle Ages. From them had blossomed a manner of farm life based on faith, solidarity, and respect for each person—social progress of such dimensions that talk of class struggle was obviated.
My father’s and grandfather’s words weaved in my mind the fabric of life in the farmhouse: the human companionship lived in harmonious obedience to the immutable rhythms of nature and work; respect and even affection for animals; and wonder at the beauty of emotions provoked in silent prayer, in gratitude for the things of life.
My father suffered deeply the end of this civilization. In 1936, at the age of 14, his family moved to the metropolis of Milan. These were the years of reconstruction, and it appeared to him a strange place. In a notebook he wrote: “The isolation, the dynamic atmosphere, the noise: they are contrary to our aspirations and our need for silence. We need to see, to think, to imagine things, to idealize a little! But who is listening? They all have to run about! Without a moment’s rest or contemplation! Where can I find a natural rhythm, sweet and spontaneous?”

In his mind grew a poignant nostalgia for that world where he grew up, the same nostalgia found in the books of Malavoglia, Pasolini, and Guareschi. This longing marked him: for the rest of his life, until his final days, he searched for the beauty he had glimpsed as a boy. Perhaps that’s why, in his desire that a good be shared, he dedicated himself to the study of medicine, and in 1946 became a doctor specializing in pediatrics. This is the second moment that will mark his existence.

In his first post-war term as district doctor in a poor Bergamo village, he learned everything not in an office but out in the field. The night after his arrival, he was called to assist a difficult birth in a home lit only by a lamp that, unlikely as it sounds, the new mother at some point accidentally knocked over, plunging everyone into darkness. And outside the front door, the whole country, it seemed, had gathered to make sure the new doctor was competent (the previous one having been kicked out following a mother’s death). Everything turned out fine, and the people continued to appreciate him both professionally and personally for the two years he remained in that region, as evidenced by the fact that, even fifty years later, residents still sought him out at Easter and Christmas for special greetings.
Back in Milan, he started a medical insurance fund, and at the same time volunteered at Buzzi Children's Hospital. Today we forget that job insecurity has always existed: it took ten years of unpaid labor before one could finally be hired. Even now, in the district of Baggio-Forze Armate where we lived, there are people on the street who tell me: “Your father saved my son,” or “I don’t know what would’ve happened to my grandson if it hadn’t been for your father.”

Even his way of understanding the medical profession marked a period of transition that should give pause today. He always said: “History is critical in treating a patient, especially if it’s a child—that is, a person, not a series of disconnected organs. You have to meet him, to talk together to understand.” Where other doctors could not make a diagnosis, my father would talk with the child, make him want to get well, and through this the child would reveal important details that identified the illness. In addition to possessing a great insight, he possessed a great desire to learn more, to learn and understand—a desire that did not die even when he retired. Until recently, in fact, he continued to go to the San Carlo Hospital as a volunteer, lining up every morning behind the primary physician and the trainees to turn into the lane, reading medical records so as to better understand and advise. “Being a doctor means never stopping,” he often said. When asked why he continued to visit the hospital, he replied: “How otherwise do I learn?”

Considered the best pediatrician in the province of Milan, he never became the head of a department or chief. Today there is much talk of corruption, but even in his time careers were sought through party connections or friendship with rich families. However, he never complained about not becoming the chief, especially because of the families who cared for him and who loved his work. He never charged those who could not afford it: he once came home telling of a little boy with leukemia, and the drama of his little patient hovered over in the house for days and months.

Children's Hospital had also known my mother, a volunteer Red Cross nurse. She and my father remained together for fifty years and four days, in a deep, loving relationship sustained by faith and the fact of sharing, in good times and bad, their everyday life, and their desire for their children to have everything (including an appreciation for sacrifice and thrift).
But life is unpredictable. It reserved, for a man who spent his life treating children, the pain of not having grandchildren, the offspring that every family tends to identify with the promise of life.

Can faith accept that his family continues in a bond that is not blood, but rather through the fruitfulness given by his loved ones’ vocation to virginity? And how to overcome the temptation to think that everything will end in nothing “after so many sacrifices”? Many seek the fulfillment of their existence in the continuation of their families: this increases in him a deep melancholy, sign of a long-sought Infinite, which becomes an acute perception that all is not finished. After so much time, now you can finally see that this fruitfulness has been infinitely great.