Antonio Zammit writes:

Grazzi ta’ kollox Fredu. Yes, I have to begin in your mother tongue which you cherished the most, though a polyglot. And lest I forget, “Jien mill-Isla” always took pride of place when introducing yourself.

Simplicity was your hallmark. You were a man with few needs and yet you managed to satisfy the many needs of all those who had the great fortune of crossing your path.

I shudder at the thought of what an unkempt personality I would now be had I not, together with ‘the group’, not taken up your invitation to all-comers, which appeared in The Times in the summer of  1975 (which I bless to this day) for a weekend of ‘sensitivity training’ − a novelty for the island, an unheard of exercise in humanity.

You became my mentor. You gave me that moment in which I discovered who I really am. You fashioned us, I dare say more than our parents did. You taught us how to really love persons. We thought we knew how. We didn’t.

You taught us that love is already within us and that all people belong to each other because they belong to humanity. And how many others, outside our ‘group’, did you save from a journey from birth to death via mediocrity and apathy, rejecting change and thus serving as agents of decay?

I learned to parry the hackneyed “għax dejjem hekk għamilna” with “u dejjem ħażin għamiltu”. Many realised that if they didn’t pursue their dreams, they would be sinning against life.

On February 10, for the first time, you made us cry Fredu. We thought we had grown accustomed to seeing you wither away since April 2014. How wrong we were. What a punch the absurdity of life carries!

You, who had given us back ourselves, after other people had got to us before you, restored our lives, our consciences, those selves able to reflect upon themselves in freedom. It can never be as before now.

Memories have weight. We now know harmony. That’s why we cried upon realising the extent of our loss.

It is now more than ever impossible for me not to follow ethical living and to be a person of integrity, even though I know that this belief rarely pays a dividend.

‘The group’ still remembers your escapades when abroad giving lectures: war torn Lebanon, Kenya, Tijuana and Mother Teresa. 

You always pardoned my naughty “join the Jesuits to see the World”  −  I know it’s “Let the World see who joined the Jesuits”! Locally it was daily jogging and swimming May to December!

We must let you go on living through our deeds by cherishing what you taught us, certain that it will make the world a better place. You now know whether infinite love awaited you or whether yours was the extreme sacrifice of having life’s beauty wrenched from you to make room for others to savour this wonderful adventure we call life − rather more altruistic than the conquest of paradise.

I salute you by paraphrasing in the language foisted upon you at the beginning of your studies which you mastered:

Avec le temps tout s’en va.
On oublie le visage et on oublie la voix.
Le coeur, quand ça bat plus,
C’est pas la peine d’aller chercher plus loin.
Faut laisser faire.

Avec le temps tout s’évanouit,
Même les plus chouettes souvenirs.
Les rayons de la mort vont tout seul,
Et on se sent comme un cheval fourbu
Et on se sent floue par les années.

Mais, avec le temps, vraiment,
On aime plus.

Grazzi mill-ġdid, Fredu.