The Thousands of Conversations
When I look back today, I realize there were not merely a few hundred conversations. Over the years, there must have been thousands. Conversations about numerology. Spirituality. The strange coincidences we sometimes call chance. Loss. Sorrow. Love. And very often, Marco. Those conversations almost never took place in our home. Dorina did not want people coming to the house to speak about spirituality or numerology.
She herself does not believe in spirituality. She also preferred not to speak openly about Marco. I do not fully know why it was so difficult for her. And because I do not know, I do not want to attribute reasons or feelings to her that she never expressed herself. Two parents can lose the same child and yet experience their grief in entirely different ways. I needed to speak. To share memories.
To try to understand what had happened. Dorina did not seek that openness. Where I needed words, she preferred silence. Where I sought contact with people who asked themselves similar questions, she kept her feelings to herself. Neither way makes the loss any less great.
But the difference between us was sometimes difficult. To me, speaking about Marco was not an attempt to continue living in the past. It was a way of keeping him close. Marco and I had shared so much. Our interest in technology. Our collaboration. Our dreams. Our endless conversations and debates. We could disagree profoundly.
But it was precisely from those debates that our best ideas were often born. After his death, all of that suddenly disappeared. There was no longer anyone with whom I could speak in the same way. No one who understood exactly which dreams we had cherished together and how many years of our lives had become intertwined with them.
Perhaps that is why I continued seeking contact through other paths. Since those conversations could not take place in our home, I had them elsewhere. At spiritual activities. During gatherings. In cafés. On walks. By telephone. And later, increasingly often, through the Internet. WhatsApp became an important way to communicate with people. Some conversations began with a single short message.
But before I realized it, people were telling me their entire life story. Sometimes someone wrote to me in the middle of the night. A person who was grieving. Someone who felt alone. Or someone who did not dare to say anywhere else what was truly troubling them. Many contacts also arose through a website where I spoke about Marco. There, I told the story of his life. Our collaboration. His dreams.
But also his death and the questions that remained within me as his father. Over the years, I also shared hundreds of photographs and videos of Marco and our family on different social networks. To some people, perhaps they were only images. To me, they were fragments of a life. A smile. A journey. A celebration. A moment at work. A memory of who Marco truly was. I did it for one very simple reason:
I did not want him to be forgotten. I did not want his entire life reduced to his final day. Anyone who knows only how Marco died does not yet know who Marco was. He was a son. A father. A brother. A friend. An entrepreneur. A human being full of ideas and enthusiasm. He was someone who could laugh, dream, debate, and inspire others.
By sharing his photographs, videos, and story, I tried to keep all those sides of him alive. In that way, the digital world became far more than a technical tool to me. It became a place of remembrance. A place where I could continue telling Marco's story. And at the same time, a place where people from everywhere came to me with their own stories. Many of those conversations began with numerology. Someone sent me a date of birth.
Another person told me about numbers that kept recurring in their life. Another still was trying to find meaning in an event they could not explain. Over the years, I performed a numerological calculation or analysis for hundreds of people. I never asked for any payment. Not once. I did it because I wanted to help people reflect on their lives. The numbers were often only the beginning. They opened a door.
But behind that door always stood a human being. A human being with questions. With sorrow. With hope.
With fears. And with a story that wanted to be heard. Alongside those personal conversations, over the years I participated in hundreds of spiritual activities and organized many myself. In that way, I met people with widely differing backgrounds and convictions. Some had deep faith. Others doubted everything. Still others were mainly curious. I never thought it necessary for someone to believe the same things I did.
I did not want to convince anyone. I wanted to understand. And I wanted to give space to questions that often have very little room in daily life. What touched me each time was the trust people placed in me. Sometimes they told me things they had never shared with anyone before. Sorrow that had remained hidden for years. Fears they did not dare express before their own family. Experiences for which they feared being judged or ridiculed.
I always regarded that trust as a special privilege. The personal stories people entrusted to me do not belong to me, and I cannot tell them in turn. Their names. Their secrets. Their pain. All of it remains with me. What I can share are the lessons all those encounters taught me. I never claimed to possess the truth. Quite the opposite. I saw myself as someone who traveled part of the road with another person.
Sometimes I could offer a thought. Sometimes a numerological analysis helped someone look at life from another angle. But very often, I did nothing more than listen. And perhaps that was precisely what mattered most. People do not always seek someone who will give them all the answers. They seek someone who gives them genuine attention. Someone who does not interrupt them. Who does not immediately judge. Who does not tell them what they should feel.
But who receives their story with respect and humanity. Perhaps I helped some people. But they gave me at least as much. Every encounter left something within me. Every conversation taught me something about sorrow, courage, love, or forgiveness. And every person who opened their heart to me also helped me understand my own heart better.
That is why those thousands of conversations never flowed in only one direction. Each time, we traveled a short part of the road together. Sometimes for only a few minutes. Sometimes for many years. Some people later disappeared from my life. Others became friends. But no sincere encounter was without meaning. Dorina probably saw little of most of that world. She is not interested in social networks or digital information and communication. She does, however, read a great deal. Books.
Magazines. And she watches television. Perhaps that is also one of the deepest reasons I want to write this book. Not only for my children. Not only for my grandchildren. Not only for the people who knew Marco. But perhaps also, in some small way, for Dorina. I hope she will want to read this book one day. Not because I want to convince her of my ideas about spirituality.
Nor because she should experience things in the same way I do. But because I hope she will then better understand what happened within me throughout all those years. Why I continued speaking about Marco. Why I continued sharing his photographs and videos. Why I sought contact with so many people. Why numerology and spirituality became so important to me. And why I felt that Marco's story had to continue being told.
Perhaps this book can reach her in a way that a website, a WhatsApp message, or a social media post never could. Perhaps between these lines she will recognize something of the bond that united Marco and me. Our shared interests. Our collaboration. Our debates. Our dreams. And the immense silence his death left within me. The thousands of conversations I later had with others could not fill that silence.
But they enabled me not to remain entirely alone within it. They taught me to be humbler. More patient. More cautious in my judgments. And more sensitive to the invisible battle every human being may carry within. Above all, they confirmed a truth in which I have never stopped believing: Every human being needs, at least once in life, someone who listens not only with the ears... but above all with the heart.