Hi Franco,

I’m having a hard time writing these words to you because I still can’t believe you’re no longer here, with Domus colleagues and, if you’ll allow me, with me too. It was only last Friday when I approached you, early in the morning, tinkering with your new mobile phone. “It’s nice but too big,” you said to me, turning it over in your hands. Your expression said it all. You were happy and moving on, but something was wrong. Well, to me, that’s you. And always will be.

I came to Domus almost three years ago and you hit me right away. For your smile, your sympathy, your elegance. Also for your professional skills, but above all for your willingness to welcome with a smile the news or the requests of those who could appear different, or worse like a Martian, as me. And this despite having a car like yours, which gave the same problems to both of us. And which we talked about, in the evening, in front of the parking lot.

In these thirty-six months we have seen a lot of things and every time we met we looked at each other, without saying anything but understanding each other perfectly. Or at least I thought so and you confirmed it. I’ve often thought about it during this period. I knew little about you, but enough to imagine how two different lives, two different stories, two different men understood each other like that, without talking. It was as if something impalpable was binding us together, but warm in my heart. I didn’t know you, but you were a friend, one of us, or even more, one of me.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to talk and get to know you, nor to make myself known as other colleagues did, who spent many years with you. I am happy for them and sorry for me. I can only tell you that this is one of my greatest regrets, one of the things that I will always carry in my heart and that will teach me to restore balance, in a time and space where balances often jump. Along with priorities.

I remember when you told me about your daughter, and her graduation, your pride, the emotion with which you talked about your wife and the smile with which you ended the conversation, as always, turning your head to one side and twisting your mouth a little, as if to say that you did not want to add anything else. That is you and that’s what I carry in my heart.

As little as I may have known you, I tell you that you were also an excellent graphic designer, a professional as everyone should aspire to be: always punctual, always available, always precise and open to new things, challenges, changes. Always ready to do for others what they often couldn’t or didn’t know. Or sometimes they didn’t even want to do, let's say.

I can’t say anything more and better than that. I greet you only by saying that you have taught me and given me much more than you can think.

I am going to miss you. And I won’t forget you.
Walter