Alex Zanardi funeral, Don Pozza’s moving homily: what he said and the anecdote about the lesson in the service station

There’s Alex, me, two guys (from prison): we’re returning from a public meeting. When I sit down, they are telling him their dirty story: both of them have blood on their hands, unfortunately. Many years of prison behind me: I brought them with me, I wanted them to hear Alex’s story from Alex’s voice. He listens to them as few, perhaps, have listened to them: he is not distracted, immobile, he memorizes everything in his feline gaze. Once finished, he stands up, one hand in the crutch, the other in theirs: “Guys – he said with that cadence that made him compelling -: you’ve made a big mess, you bastard. But: hats off to you for the way you’re digging into it. You keep asking yourselves the reason for that rude gesture”. He hugged them, they kissed him. Then, sitting down, he asked them a question: “Can I ask you just one thing?” Arms outstretched, it was an assent. “What if you could go back?”. They swore they wouldn’t do it again. “You see, guys – he said -. Sometimes five extra seconds are enough to make the difference. It’s an exercise that we don’t always succeed in (you confirm this), but those five seconds are fundamental. These five seconds are everywhere: in affection, in relationships, at work. It’s the idea of ​​trying to see if you can do something else than what you’re about to do. If, by chance, those five seconds make you take the bear home, they will become a kind of drug that you will no longer be able to do without. Look for these seconds everywhere! This is all I feel like telling you after your story.”

Zanardi Funerals, Don Pozza’s homily

The parish priest continued: “The rustichelle were cold, the hearts were boiling. When we left them in front of the prison, Alex told me again so that I wouldn’t forget that Master Reading on Autogrill: “Even more so today, I convince myself that the problem is not whether the glass is half full or half empty. The problem is whether you are thirsty or not. Look at me, don: if I can do something for these two boys and you don’t tell me, it’s not friendship. It’s too easy to applaud the winners, remember that!”.

My Alex is all here. I leave you the medals, the roar of the engines, the smell of petrol. The lights of the podiums, the glitter of the memorabilia, the rustle of the applause. I hold man very closely, with his compelling humanity. No one, more than Saint Paul, the athlete of God, could provide a better summary of this life traveled at a thousand miles an hour, even in a wheelchair: «Every athlete is temperate in everything. But I run not like someone who is aimless; I box, but not like someone who beats the air, rather I treat my body harshly and drag it into slavery so that after having preached to others, I myself am not disqualified” (1Cor 9,19-27). Alex ran a lot, but he never did it like a boxer who beats the air: he ran like someone who has a goal in mind: “Power is nothing without control” said a Pirelli advertisement from the 1990s last century. The power of a dazzling smile, of a crystalline soul, of a man who grew up without losing the child he was. Without losing the taste of tears: because if life tears your sister away from you on the road, you must have very deep roots to choose and (re)choose the road and the asphalt as the setting for your existence and then convince the world that what happened, whatever it is, remains the greatest opportunity that life offers to put things right. Life-saving roots in which the smile of mother Anna, Daniela and Nicolò is imprinted which prevented him from living like someone who combs dolls: in every run, (re)run or trip there was always his Ithaca waiting for him. Since the time of Homer, Ulysses has fought, sunk, raised his thumb. Penelope, in the meantime, remains: weaves, waits, meditates. No podium or medal for her, not even when she deserves it because the suffering is ugly, wild, merciless but she chooses to stay. To adjust his speed to the pace of the slowest. Now, reading backwards, I like it more the booklet that Alex gave me one day: Jonathan Livingston the Seagull. He had the foresight, a fine soul, to let me find a sentence underlined. He was obviously talking about speed: “You will reach Heaven when you have reached perfect speed. Which does not mean a thousand miles an hour, nor a million miles, nor does it mean flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, but perfection has no limits. My son, perfect speed just means being there, being there.” Being there, because, albeit in a different way, in everything there is always good, bad: living is finding that little bit of good and making it your point support to lift the earth.

Zanardi, the memory of Don Pozza

Not the gold medals in London, not even the “monstrous” performance in Hawaii are worth the gain of having met a man who, forgive me, knew how to handle the subjunctive as well as the control unit of his racing cars. When he spoke, you felt the pride of being the son of a language, Italian, which alone has the subjunctive in its grammar. Everyone knows how to use the indicative, it is the way of certainty, of security: “This is the right narrative!” The subjunctive is more of an open door: “What if this (subjunctive) isn’t the only possible interpretation?” Everyone who knows everything, there are few left who know how to ask. Alex, for those who knew how to treasure his friendship, retained the curiosity of those who knew how to ask. If his story had been a house, he would never have sworn he knew what was at the end of the corridor, beyond the hedge: this is living in the indicative. He, a man of the subjunctive, lived as if everything were a blind date, an improvisation, his mind wide open. He didn’t care about knowing how the corridor of the house ended, he wanted to frequent infinity. Never said: “Hi mom, I’ve arrived!” He has always reiterated that, for him, the subjunctive is a lifestyle: “If everything were beautiful, you know how terribly boring” was his simple philosophy. You don’t like the subjunctive very much: we are a people of certain news, no doubt, the questions make us itch. The maybe scares. Then, however, you caught Zanardi on TV or on the street and you couldn’t detach your attention from his way of reflecting, of enjoying life, of living the limit Those who love the indicative, today regret the athlete he was. Whoever dares to use the subjunctive, today thanks man. I too – I apologize for my partiality – thank someone. I say thanks to Dr. Costa, the guru of the mobile clinic. I say thank you because, as a man of science, in recent days he has dared to talk about the soul when talking about Alex: “With his friendship he has redesigned the contours of my soul, both as a doctor and as a man” he said the other evening. I thank you for having summed up with the genius that I recognize in you, that the athlete, without the man, is nothing. It’s power without control.

Nobody says: “Okay: but he was Zanardi”. The Gospel would use the whip. Alex, like everyone, had talents. It doesn’t matter how many: “To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one.” The reason for a different treatment? “To each according to his ability” (see Mt 25,14-30). The difference will not be made by the number, but by a law of sport which Mennea summarizes thus: “I have received talents as a gift. I, however, did not fall asleep on them, but I made them fruitful”. This is the page of the Gospel according to Alex, a question of talents, of sleeping or waking up. Because even with only one talent as a gift, if you can read the trajectory of the Corkscrew like no one else, in the Laguna Seca area, you will show the world that “there is no curve that cannot be overcome” (A. Senna). I imagine my God come: “() Good and faithful Alex, take part in my joy”. Because I was in prison and you, in Autogrill, were there to listen to me. I was sick and not only did you come to visit me: you even gave me a handbike so that I could get back on my feet. Sorry for sister Death: she thought she had won it, finally. She didn’t do the math well this time, damn mockery? That Alex, even in death, continues to talk about goals.”