A father’s navigation notes for those seeking a true companionship for life, choosing not to surrender to the ice.
Beyond the fjord there is not ice, but life: our course.
The cold harbour of Ultima Thule
“Io che ho doppiato tre volte Capo Horn / e ho navigato sette volte i sette mari…”
I won’t deny that I have cried, and more than once, listening to Francesco Guccini sing his Ultima Thule. There is a disarming truth in that old sailor who, with his sails slack and his crew lost, looks the end of his voyage in the face. Guccini sings of landing in a kingdom of eternal ice, a “cold harbour” where every passion dies out and even memory disappears.
At 55, looking back, I understand that sailor. Life has not spared me its storms. The death of my brother, lost when I was only 18; the loss of my son Amedeo, who flew away while he was still a tiny baby; the end of a marriage; the sudden disability of my other son, Gabriele, who at 23 found himself staring death in the face from a hospital bed.
In the midst of all this, the daily struggle not to sink. There were days when the ice of Ultima Thule seemed the only reasonable destination. Days when exhaustion whispers that you are sailing on a dead ship, with no purpose.
The watershed: a companionship for life
And yet I never believed in that harbour of ice. Not out of naive optimism, but because life set a different reality before me.
This year, an Easter poster from Communion and Liberation quoted these words: «Compagnia alla vita» (a companionship for life). One sentence struck me like lightning: “The Resurrection does not take life away from time and toil, but changes its meaning and its flavour”.
That is the watershed. Pain and toil remain, but you are not alone in facing them. Had it not been for the friends of my youth, I would not have survived the darkness of my twenties. Today, this same Presence has the steady, peace-giving features of my partner Monika, or the stubborn face of my son Gabriele. I have learnt that the other person brings you back to reality when your thoughts grow too dark, softens the blows and reminds you that you are not sailing into the void.
Shaping reality: from “Gyerünk” to enterprise
This companionship is not a nice, comforting theory. It takes on an absolutely physical form and gets its hands dirty on the building sites of every day.
When despair in hospital made Gabriele wish for the end, I never preached to him. I simply told him: “Come on. Gyerünk. Let’s keep going”. Because life has to be shaped every day, even when it gets hard. And he got back on his feet.
Together we began to build. We did not settle for “surviving”: we gave concrete ideas legs by founding Asociația Haide Gabriele! and Haide Gabriele Holding. Within these organisations we are working for all-round inclusion, breaking down the barrier that separates social commitment from enterprise:
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Accessible mobility: We give back freedom of action and movement to those who have lost it.
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Farming and health: We combine farm management with the production of remedies for people.
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Real autonomy: We build concrete spaces and pathways to independent living.
Our course beyond the fjord
What does this have to do with faith, or with Ultima Thule? Everything.
Building a mobility vehicle or methodically organising the work of an association are not empty actions: they are the bricks with which we are preparing a real home for Gabriele and for the people we will meet. It is our way of not breaking a person up into specialist sectors, but of embracing them as a whole.
My heart is still melancholy at times, but it is not made of stone. Life demands the courage to be faced with a disarming serenity.
Guccini’s sailor pointed his bow towards infinity expecting emptiness and cold. We point ours knowing that our toil will not be lost, and that what awaits us beyond the fjord is not ice, but real life.
Gyerünk. Let’s keep going.
Let’s build together
If you want to see how we turn this vision into everyday action, explore our projects or write to us to travel part of the road together.
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