Elderly Man Takes Photo of Dead Wife with Him to Beach Every Day So He Doesn't 'Feel Alone'
Does anyone remember the wonderfully sappy 2004 movie “The Notebook”? The film starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling wowed audiences for more reasons that just the two leads’ electric chemistry.
Its themes also resonated with viewers of all demographics. How so? Well, the movie praised romantic fidelity even when circumstances got tough — really tough.
What’s more, “The Notebook” gave us a picture of love that lasted even to the grave. And if that’s our model for romance, then let me suggest that Italian widower Giuseppe Giordano needs his own picture.
According to Metro UK, Giordano got to enjoy something that many people long for, but few find. He married and lived with the love of his life, Ida, for five decades.
The Daily Mail stated that they met when Ida was only 15. They would marry in 1969, and that marriage would last until 2011.
Yet we all know that life is a vapor and a chasing after the wind. Time, which author Neil Gaiman once eloquently named “The Thief,” isn’t unlimited, and even the best things that we once called ours are taken away.
In 2010, Ida got the diagnosis that we all fear: She had cancer.
She passed away a year later, leaving a bereaved Giordano behind. “My wife was everything to me,” he said.
“The younger generations do not hold onto love as we used to. I belong to a generation where love and feelings meant everything.”
Indeed, the strength of his adoration for Ida is what brought him to the public eye. He came to the attention of Giorgio Moffa, a restaurateur in Gaeta, Italy.
Fifty-four-year-old Moffa’s restaurant is near the beach. Nearly every day, Moffa would see a much older gentleman sit by the shore.
That man was Giordano. Only he wasn’t sitting alone.
Instead, Giordano would bring a framed picture with him and face it out toward the water. That picture was a portrait of Ida.
“’I bring Ida’s photo because in that way I feel her in my life and I don’t feel so alone,” he said. “I like going to the sea every day because it brings back all my memories. …
“The simple things are the real things, and the ones that last over time.” Indeed, and Moffa himself agreed once he learned the widower’s story.
Moffa said, “When I saw him, I was sure there was a great love story. Men like him do not exist anymore. …
“I think that everyone in this world has, at some point, lost someone special to them. … [I]t’s just that Guiseppe had the great courage and dignity to show it.”
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