Here, for a limited time only — life

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This article was published 06/03/2024 (758 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Have you ever wished you could leave your life behind?

Well, not your life, but how and where you are living it? To start the day with new scenery, a different climate; to leave your well-worn routine behind?

I have, and I am. At least for a little while.

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Everything is romantic when it is novel.

My husband and I are in southern Italy, in a rental property, living a changed life in a new location.

This life, where snow scrapers and shovels have no place in March or any other month, is like a dream. To feel the sun on your skin in winter, to stroll the bare pavements? A gift.

When the morning light warms the stones on the rooftop terrace, we sit with espressos and admire the palms. Life is beautiful.

But we have glimpsed sorrow and brutality in this place, too.

As much as you might wish it, some things you cannot leave behind.

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At the train station, Bari Centrale, an older woman is wracked with grief and surrounded by soldiers and police.

Their conversation is in Italian, but her anguish is palpable in any language.

“Stai calma!” (Stay calm!) one of the men says to the woman, who is weeping and keening.

I don’t like the impatient way he is speaking to her, but realize my observation lacks context.

I wonder who or what she has lost; whether her life will ever be the same.

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On Via Gian Giuseppe Carulli in Bari, I see a grey pigeon in the street that’s acting strangely. It’s on its back, flapping its wings erratically, unable to regain its footing.

Then I notice spots of blood on its iridescent head and on the pavement. It has been struck by a vehicle and is lying in the path of oncoming traffic.

As we discuss what to do, its frenetic movement stops. We hope it is out of its misery.

We walk on, but I can’t get the pigeon out of my head. I think of the seeming randomness of life — how one moment you are walking in the sun and the next you could be taking your last gasps, shocked and afraid.

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At dusk, riding home on a bus from Alberobello, where we have seen the whitewashed, cone-roofed Trulli houses, I am startled by a shrill ambulance speeding past.

We come upon the accident scene, where emergency vehicles have gathered, lights flashing. A police officer is searching a nearby field.

Our bus has to wait while the road is cleared.

“Sono in ritardo” (I’m late), our bus driver tells the police.

But our delay is trifling when we finally drive past the wreck of the car that is now on the back of a tow truck.

My husband figures it was struck hard from behind and rolled. The back of the vehicle is caved in, the front windshield shattered, the fine spiderweb of cracks catching the last of the daylight.

How fleeting life can be. How meaningless, death.

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When my husband flatlined in front of me in the hospital after having a heart attack in 2015, I told myself that if he lived, we would do things differently.

Like the Roman poet Horace, we would carpe diem — seize the day — and see the world, leaving our stressful journalism jobs behind, at least as often as our savings allowed.

After his recovery, life returned to its normal frenzied pace.

He retired in 2018 and had to endure prostate cancer, surgery and radiation. Then osteoarthritis caused him debilitating pain and the need for two hip replacements.

In those years we lost loved ones and dear friends. Our own mortality looms ever-nearer.

In 2022, I left my own high-pressure job, wanting to spend more time with him than the few hours snatched between work and sleep.

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So here we are.

I rinse cherry tomatoes, red pepper and arugula leaves in a yellow colander.

I set them to drain in the round, cream-coloured sink.

Using a small corked bottle I found on a shelf, I make a balsamic vinaigrette — one part vinegar, two parts extra virgin olive oil, sea salt and freshly ground pepper — and shake it until it emulsifies.

In the frying pan are pork cutlets rimmed with fresh herbs. I brown them on both sides and sprinkle them with dried oregano.

I serve the food on blue plates, the arugula’s peppery bitterness the perfect foil for the fatty unctuousness of the meat. We sip velvety, garnet-red Nero di Troia wine from this region. Tealights flicker in a shallow green bowl.

In the morning, we will set out together and walk for miles.

Pam Frampton is a freelance writer and editor who lives in St. John’s.

pamelajframpton@gmail.com

X: @pam_frampton