The Other Side

A FEW days ago I received an unexpected phone call from London informing me that Erminio, a close friend of mine, had suddenly passed away.

Erminio was born in Milan, Italy but, as a young man, he had decided to leave his native city for London. In those days continental Europeans needed a permit to work in the UK so at first he had to labour illegally for several months in an Italian café as a ‘washer-up’. He eventually became friends with some people who managed to find for him more decent employment at the London branch of an Italian bank. Erminio’s passion, however, was not for finance, but for art, and he cherished the dream of becoming a painter. This dream, buried deep within his soul, became more pressing as the years went by and, in the mid-1970s, he took the big leap by giving up his safe job as a bank clerk. With the money he had managed to save he enrolled in a Bachelor’s program at the University of Arts, London. The years at Camberwell College were very transformative ones because he was forced to analyse his art and articulate what he wanted to say with his images.

After graduating, his career as an artist began in earnest and his inner world was now able to emerge and take shape in the paintings he began to produce.



It was during this second phase of his life that I got to know him. What struck me most about Mino, as he was known to his closest friends, was the modesty with which he talked about his own works; he reminded me of a father who, in describing his own children, is careful not to exaggerate their merits, but speaks about his offspring as objectively as possible. The friendship formed on that occasion was to last till his death, for almost 30 years, and was based essentially on a deep sense of empathy. We saw eye-to-eye on so many things; we were always on the same wavelength. I was sure to meet him every time I was London. I would always hop over to his house and squeeze past his massive collection of paintings strewn all over the place in the effort to reach the living room. It was always nice sharing all our experiences from the last time we had seen each other: all our joys, sorrows, hopes, worries, even our health problems.



For some years Mino had been experiencing problems with his heart, and eventually received a pacemaker. On the day he died he was going with a friend to Harwich, a costal town in Essex when, while commuting from one train to the other, his heart suddenly stopped beating.

When the sad news reached me I was overwhelmed by sorrow and anxiety. Of course it was not the first time I had lost someone dear to me, but once again an unbearable sense of sadness was filling my heart.

That night, with pitch-black darkness all around my bedroom, I was filled with anxiety while I imagined that he was all alone, trapped in a place of complete and profound darkness, where nothing existed. Gradually, however, my eyes got used to the darkness and, from the light in the corridor which was coming in from under my door, I started to make out the objects in the room: the chairs, the desk, the  wardrobe, the crucifix on the wall… then I heard some voices, they were of two friars walking along the corridor. It was then that I felt a great sense of inner peace. No, it was not Mino who was in darkness, it was me. He was on that OTHER SIDE, he was in the light, in immense joy, in infinite love.



That is where Mino is now, in that light. There are no sufferings, no problems, no worries there; there is no need to apologise to anyone.

Mino’s presence has given joy and value to my life. His absence fills me with grief. However, I take comfort in the fact that he is in God’s eternal life now, with those he loved and who preceded him there, and that one day, of this I am sure, we will see each other again.