An Old Love Remembered

 

"Will you tell me the story of your first love?", Luciana eagerly asked her grandmother. "Mio amore," Grandma Laura replied, smiling, "the time will come when I will tell you all about a very special boy and an old woman's youthful days."

Luciana explained, "I always like the stories of Grandpa but I also love hearing stories from when you were my age and in love. I just want to picture what he was like." Luciana always knew that Grandma had loved Grandpa Bob, but she could tell that the boy of her youth had always held a deeply precious place in her heart. She seemed happy when she talked of him, but along with her happy reminiscence, lingered an overhanging feeling of sadness--of a life and love lost. 

 "To start to understand the story, I want you to go to the mountains that he loved so dearly," Laura said. "My first love is so much a part of those Italian slopes, I sometimes feel as if he is still there in that cool air and blue sky. You will begin to become acquainted with my dear Giorgio. He lives on through the trees and those hearts he touched, he was not someone that could be forgotten in a hundred lifetimes. He often told me if his studies permitted that he would spend all day outdoors 'contemplating the creator's greatness in that pure air"