Old George’s Incredible Story

By Jim Delvecchio

Old George used to live next door to me, in a beautiful house not far from his beloved Cronulla, the seaside suburb where he used to go walking every day, and still does to this day, to talk to the ocean about his ungrateful daughters and his vindictive ex-wife. Many times, I tried to get him to talk to me, tell me what the problem was that was making him so unhappy and sad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Nov 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669832904

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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Delvecchio.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/14/2022

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Contents

Losing loved ones

Chapter Two

Losing loved ones

It was Good Friday, March 25, just 2 days before Easter Sunday. It was indeed a good Friday, the sun was shining, glistening on the ocean at Cronulla beach, people were swimming, people were surfing, the restaurants were full of diners, coffee shops with long queues and the cappuccinos were flowing, everybody was having a good time and enjoying the great summer weather, everybody was happy. The cappuccino, made by the great barista friend, Tony, tasted particularly nice on that day, may be because it was a little later than usual. It seemed everyone was having a great day.

Not quite everyone though, not my very good, sad old friend, George. No, George was very unhappy, as he had been for quite a while now, probably wondering and reminiscing about some other Good Friday, when he was happy too, still with his family.

George was a small, sad old man. I had known for a long time that there was something wrong with him, his eyes were crying out for help, they seemed to be saying: I’m in trouble, and I don’t know what to do.

Old George used to live next door to me, in a beautiful house not far from his beloved Cronulla, the seaside suburb where he used to go walking every day, and still does to this day, to talk to the ocean about his ungrateful daughters and his vindictive ex-wife. Many times, I tried to get him to talk to me, tell me what the problem was that was making him so unhappy and sad.

This is the incredibly cruel story, he finally agreed to tell me about on that good Friday, between sobs and tears. Finally last March he decided he would confide in me.

His heart was completely shattered, he said, by his own daughters and his ex-wife. I could not help being moved while he recounted what they had done to him, without the remotest possibility of it being true, he said.

And here is what he said while sipping on a large cappuccino at, where else? Cronulla, of course.

On at least three other occasions throughout my life, Jim, George said, I felt like I was going to die. I felt like my world was coming to an end. It’s a feeling of incredible anguish, of fear, and not just fear of death, more like fear of losing the people I love, fear of losing my family, like not seeing them ever again, a fear of being alone and lonely. And that feeling is again with me right now and has been with me for a long while, years. My family was everything to me. Losing that, I lost everything.

The first time that great fear entered his heart was when he was only about 5 years old, back in the old country. It was about 1940. The war was on then and the whole country, indeed, the whole world, was upside down. George said he could remember the sirens blaring loudly from time to time and the whistles of bombs coming down followed by huge thuds, people screaming, children crying, including George, his whole family running to the shelter, some underground hiding safe place, while he wet his pants from fear, every time.

That was the first time George felt this sense of loneliness, fear of losing his family, mum, brothers and sisters, his dad. He couldn’t understand how it would be possible to live without his sisters and brothers, and mum and dad. He remembers once saying to his mum: mum, what happens if we die, I will never see you again or the rest of the family. And mum used to reply: No, we are not going to die¸ we will be ok, you will see.

Yes, he used to say, but what if we do die, I won’t see anybody anymore. He really didn’t think mum ever understood how deep that feeling of anguish was. As it turned out, they didn’t die, mum was right after all.

It happened again, George remembered, many years later. He was about 20 years old then, he thought his world was going to come to an end again.

George thought that because his family was very large (there were 9 kids), there was a constant need of more money, he was sort of forced to migrate to Australia, like it was the end of the world. In those days going back home was not as easy as it is today, mainly because it took about a month on a ship to get there and, of course, a month to come back, and it was very expensive. Plus, the fact that he would not be able to get the time off from work.

At the time he didn’t know anything about his new country, nor did he know a word of English. He remembered very well when he was on the ship leaving the port of Naples, on the way to Australia, his deepest fear of never seeing his loved ones once again struck in such a bad way that he just went to his cabin and cried and cried. Of course, he was on a ship. Planes were not as accessible to poor people then.

Chapter Two

The latest episode, the one that was now destroying George’s life, happened just a few years ago.

And that was precisely what drove poor old George to almost suicide. On this last occasion: his family, his daughters, and his ex-wife, from whom George had been separated for about a year or so; Then George and his wife restarted seeing each other again thanks to his insistence they make up, he said he thought they had made a mistake, and all was well, until one day:

George went on:

They, his wife and daughters, for some inexplicable reason, suddenly, out of the blue, accused him of a horrible crime, without checking their facts or seeing any expert on the matter, they said they had books that proved they were right…, incredible. Of course, George thought, they did not know what they were talking about. Why they did that, to this day, he still didn’t know. He had an idea that, maybe, his wife was seeing someone else and just