Goodbye, Pietrin

The days in Alba and the Langa area are filled with grief and mourning over the sudden loss of Pietro Ferrero, Chief Executive ofFERRERO, the Alba confectionery business of worldwide fame.

Often one would meet him walking down via Maestra in Alba and enjoy the exchange of a hello and a smile. And it was just as easy to meet him while riding his bike along the Langa roads, accompanied by the inevitable gray van.

Because he chose to live in Alba and so became a “Langhetto”, we would like to honor him here in our own special way, with a poem by another of our great townsmen, who also died, dramatically, at little more than 40 years old.

Pietro Ferrero died on Monday, April 18, 2011, struck down by a sudden illness while on a business trip in South Africa.

Death overcame him during a bicycle outing, his great passion: a skid, the fall, nothing could be done to save him.

And so Pietro Ferrero died (for more information see www.lastampa.it).

This small contribution to his memory is also a symbol of participation in the deep sorrow felt throughout the area and by all those who loved him.

You are the earth and death. Your season is darkness and silence. Nothing is so remote from the dawn as you.
When you seem to wake up you go on being a sadness. It’s in your eyes and your blood though you don’t feel it. You live as a stone lives or the hard earth. You wear dreams motions tears thoughtless as clothing. Like lake water the sadness quivers and surrounds you. There are rings on the water. You let them vanish. You are the earth and death.
Pavese, Cesare. “Death and the earth” The Free Library 01 September 1997. 26 April 2011 .
Death and the earth

December 3, 1945 – Cesare Pavese