Life begins and ends with water. This resonates with me when I visit the ocean. I could recount the things that we did in the Amalfi Coast in terms of Yelp stars, but I won’t. I could tell you about the food we ate, the trek to our hotel, the ceramic artistry, or the fisherman I saw every evening setting his line out as the sun was setting. But I won’t. Sometimes your relationship to a place is purely metaphysical. And this cherished place was just that.
We arrived in Vietri Sul Mare by train and as Italy is wont to disarm you with its beauty, we were instantly brought to tears by the view from the station—seemingly deserted and carrying a charming antiquity about it, atop a hill on a dead end road with weeds springing out from between its cobblestones. The Amalfi drive could be seen from a distance hugging the ocean and the crisp line of the horizon was lost between the dance of blues among the sky and the water. It’s moments like these that we feel so fortunate to be alive on this little phenomenon called earth. And when you’re in Italia, these moments are everywhere. So, in the words of Giò, “Never forget to look out the window, Kid.”
We arrived in Vietri Sul Mare by train and as Italy is wont to disarm you with its beauty, we were instantly brought to tears by the view from the station—seemingly deserted and carrying a charming antiquity about it, atop a hill on a dead end road with weeds springing out from between its cobblestones. The Amalfi drive could be seen from a distance hugging the ocean and the crisp line of the horizon was lost between the dance of blues among the sky and the water. It’s moments like these that we feel so fortunate to be alive on this little phenomenon called earth. And when you’re in Italia, these moments are everywhere. So, in the words of Giò, “Never forget to look out the window, Kid.”
Giò has seen this view many times. His father brought their family to Vietri Sul Mare one summer in 1993 as they were just passing through the Amalfi Coast. This little pit stop soon became the birthplace for decades of Crisafulli memories. He shares them with me often: La Lucertola, the steep staircase to the rocky beach, I Due Fratelli, waving at his father out on his favorite boulder, the modesty of the locals that seem to be living in a state of humble tranquility, and simply being together with his family. There is nothing that Giò cherishes more than his loved ones. That’s one of the things that made me fall in love with him. We would talk for hours about our parents, siblings, cousins, and grandparents. Seeing him be an uncle is an incredible sight. I love to see pictures of those times in Vietri—all in film—grainy, flushed of its true colors, with a baby-faced Giò all smiles in the Italian summer heat. We thumb through them sometimes and the sound of cellophane peeling away from the pages in the photo albums makes anyone nostalgic for the days of film photography. Seeing this place in all of its true colors was akin to those transitions in motion pictures where a photograph turns into a real gesticulating world bursting with color, movement, and sound. All of those grainy photographs came to life; only Giò’s dad wasn’t sitting out on his favorite rock.
There is one thing more devastating than seeing your partner experience the slow and painful year following the loss of his father: the loss itself. With every day that passes, time seems to swallow up the hope of a future with him by our side. The good days are few and far between, stolen from the midst of perennial sorrow. There is an air of banality encompassing everything that once felt important. And you are present throughout it all, fighting by their side, but somehow so far away, helplessly looking on in a perpetual state of worry. There is a daily struggle not to give up on the seemingly foolish herculean efforts put forth to make it all okay. On the really tough days I would sit alone and weep thinking of his suffering. When you really love someone—truly, irrevocably, madly—his emotional health is what determines yours. Your soul is naked before his. It’s difficult to articulate the feeling without sounding like a Hallmark card. I saw him get buried beneath the soot of his own world crumbling upon him. And it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I multiply that feeling a thousand times in an attempt to empathize with him losing his dad, his hero. I knew that this stop would not be an easy one, but necessary to the process of his healing.
I have always loved the ocean, but not like Giò. We go to the beach as often as we can during the summer and my favorite thing is to see him bask in the vastness of it all. I revel in his perfect symbiosis with nature, which I can only imagine, comes from his unbridled respect for our universe. Just like his dad. Since his passing, I have come to find that it is a place where Giò can freely speak to his father. For this reason, I often linger behind him as we swim. Sometimes a man just needs to be alone with his dad. We went down to the small rocky beach of La Lucertola as the sun was setting and I watched Giò float in the soft undulations of the evening water. The twilight painted everything gold. From above, one would think it was a river. I am used to sand beneath such clear water like in Dominican Republic, not the small pebbles that one would find in a stream. It reminded me of home where we go swimming in the cold springs on the days when the beach is too far of a drive. I looked over at Giò as he was about to get in. I saw him pause just before. The water would be cold, but also engross him with echoes of his father’s laughter. I am no longer a stranger to this private moment as it is a recurring one: experiencing this for the first time without his dad. It was present on his 37th birthday, last Christmas, last Thanksgiving, and last Easter. After splashing around a bit and looking out towards his father’s rock, he was ready to go back up to the hotel with a refreshed demeanor. As we walked up the staircase back to the hotel, we paused to look back onto the water. It’s as if Joe’s name was written in the sky and we felt his arms around us both in that moment. We felt the warmth of his father’s smile envelope our hearts, transcending time and space to remind us that he hasn’t forgotten us.
The days that followed were tranquil and introspective. We enjoyed our time together as well as apart, sitting side by side but occupying our own mental spaces. Italy was a gift in that way. There is an energy about it that I’m sure a lot of people feel but can’t necessarily describe. And that’s okay because it is a gift that’s very personal.
The days that followed were tranquil and introspective. We enjoyed our time together as well as apart, sitting side by side but occupying our own mental spaces. Italy was a gift in that way. There is an energy about it that I’m sure a lot of people feel but can’t necessarily describe. And that’s okay because it is a gift that’s very personal.
We left Vietri with bittersweet feelings. The perpetual cycle of life is disconcerting at times. Our forlorn hearts suffer in the moments where we wish it could slow down or stop for just a few more moments. So we can hold our loved ones just a bit longer, cherish the sunset just a bit longer, enjoy the laughter of our cousins for just a big longer. But then we are reminded that we have been given the uncanny gift of our memory to look back on the times that we cherish. In this way, life does go on, but those moments do not pass. They live on forever for us to feel whenever we like. This is also true for the people we love who we can no longer touch.
We cannot wait to return and build upon an ever-lasting foundation of family memories that we hold so dear. Joe’s smile twinkled on the waters of the Amalfi Coast as we continued our journey North.
We cannot wait to return and build upon an ever-lasting foundation of family memories that we hold so dear. Joe’s smile twinkled on the waters of the Amalfi Coast as we continued our journey North.