Death is part of Life. Having been born in Marília-SP, a small city of 60,000, I was used to attend funerals since I was a small boy. Most people then died at home, and were mourned by relatives in their own living rooms. During a wake people usually left their front door open to welcome anyone who cared to go in and have a look at the deceased in a casket set at the centre of the parlour. and pay their respect for those who remained. It was a 24-hour event. It was sort of a 'free-for-all' affair, so whenever I saw a little crowd nearby a home, I suspected there was a funeral taking place and whether I knew them or not I felt free to go in and check it out.
I remember when my Father's aunt called Tia Nenê died in 1955. Four years later, in 1959, my Mother's father, Giovanni Battista Darin, died at the ripe age of 87. That was an event that marked my life considerably.
When kids died, we, children, felt the sting of death more dramatically. I don't remember having had friends who died when I was a child, except for my cousin Moacyr's only daughter called Marília, who died of when she was only 2 months old. I can never forget her little white casket sitting at the top of the stairs of Moacyr's living room on 4 July 1954.
In 1960, when I was 11 years old, my family moved to São Paulo, a huge city. In a big city, people didn't mourn their dead in their living room...so Death is invisible. People die in hospitals and most are mourned at private or public parlours. It seems to me that there is a deliberate effort to avoid mourning people, unless they are celebrities like Elis Regina in 1982 or Ayrton Senna in 1995.
I think Nino, was the first friend I had who died. He was murdered in early 1977, when he was only 28 years old. I only knew about his death one year later, in 1978, when I met a friend of his in town and he told me the sad news.
Here is the list of my friends who died through the years:
1. Antonio Gonçalves Filho aka Nino (28) (28 April 1949) died on January 1977.
2. Amira Shelhot died on February 1983.
3. Antonio Carlos Faria aka Totó (5 April 1951) died on 10 July 1998;
4. Maria Gouveia (22nd April 1948, in Portugal) died on 19 September 1998, in Sydney
5. Benjamin Grieve died on 2nd November 2003, in Sydney
6. Ariovaldo Skrapec (54) (4 September 1950) died on 16 August 2004
7. Luiz Antonio Amorim (9 August 1961) died on 30 August 2009, in Marília-SP
8. Paulo Naoto Tyba * 7 July 1951; died on 7 June 2010, in Curitiba-PR.
9. Silvia Paula Jentsch (1st February 1942) died on 13 August 2010;
10. Ricardo Augusto Hypolito aka Cacau (7 April 1971) died on 2nd January 2014;
11. Mirian Almeida Pinho Rosa (5 February 1945, in Rio-DF) died on 23rd June 2015;
12. Maria de Lourdes Pelaes aka Malu (59) (November 1948) died on 19 March 2018;
13. Walter Teruo Tsutsui (74) (22nd August 1947) died on 16 April 2021;
14. Thaís Matarazzo Cantero (30 May 1981) died on 11 January 2023;
15. Vander Loureiro (5 June 1929, in Avaré-SP) died on 29 August 2024.
The day Amira Shelhot died in February 1983, I had to contact some of her friends like Beryl Davis, who was the last person she had seen on Friday night at her home on 2 Porter Avenue, Marrickville, Sydney.
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