Alma Tarelli

Transcript

i never heard the words i love you from my father it is not that my father was unable of the emotional vulnerability of saying these words to me no my father couldn't hear and couldn't speak in 1944 during the world war ii albania was occupied by germans and at the time my father's family was bombed during bowman my father sustained injuries and from that time and on he was not able to speak or hear my father was deaf and mute because of this at a very young age he started working in construction he never went to school later on he got married and he had

me and my siblings we would communicate with my father with sign language but not the american traditional sign language that we know today no there wasn't school for this in albania we would communicate with our language and we understood each other perfectly when i was growing up when i was young my father was not different from other fathers to me my father used to play and dance with me he taught me how to play chess at the age of three and by the age of seven i used to beat him and even though my father was a peaceful man when i would capture his queen

he would become become angry with himself and i cherish these memories in my heart and my soul and i'll keep them forever my father also taught me how to waltz and dance and he never heard the sound of music in his life but he danced beautifully i never realized my father was different you know till i became a teenager then i became angry with god and resentful with people i wasn't feeling safe going with my father in unfamiliar places when i was teenager i attended different kind of parties some pity parties i attended some surprise parties people were surprised how come a man with such

disability will have such well-behaved children but i also attended some unkind parties and people would comment and make fun of my father's disability this world has lots of small people and i have forgiven these people because i understand that the reason for their judgmental is their own insecurity but at the time their comments have created scars and these scars became one and they hurt it took me a while to heal i truly believe that if we transcend from our physicality and we connect with each other through heart instead of our appearances the world would be different when my father used to meet people he used

to shake his right hand and the left hand would be on his chest and he connected with people this way and i know he touched so many lives and people when he passed away there were thousands and thousands of people in his funeral and there were people that he built their houses and they came to pay him respect and but also people that uh were touched by him during his lifetime i have one unrepairable wish and i wish that my father would hear my voice only once in his lifetime and then i would say that i love you if my father would be here today

he would say this love doesn't need words

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.