Dinner Time for Doggies

Not very likely! Well, they did get one, between them, for posing for me.

Not a shadow on the image I had planned. I took a whole series of photos that I was going to piece together. An afternoon without pressure would give me a little rare time to play. Turning on the computer, and as one does, I had a fleeting look at the statuses on Facebook. Scrolling down the list in haste, my eye caught a photograph of my nieces and my father in law. The caption, in Italian, was "Goodbye, Nono (Grandad) Enzo".

That is how I learnt that my father in law had died this afternoon.

I was very close to my father in law. Little more than a girl, I met his son, spoke little Italian and was far from home. He welcomed me into a closely knit family and did more for me, in the years I spent in Rome, than my own father. I will never forget his kindness, or his personality. He was a "brontolone", a person who argues about everything. I swear that my in laws have argued, as their only form of communication, for the past 70 years! I soon learnt that the eternal grumbling was a form of affection.

Resta in pace, Papa. Sai che, ti ho voluto un bene che non te lo mai detto.

Damn social media...!

It's all too easy to put up a post without thinking of the consequences. I was called very shortly after I saw the post.. there were who, closer than I, had not yet been informed.