Author F. Isabel Campoy Talks To Her Father

Juan Diego Campoy Coronado

 

The strength of your mind sculpted the prodigy of our existence. 

The poetry of your heart made you, our example of life.

We come to say good-bye, with our hearts filled with a rainbow of feelings that your life sowed in our hearts. Dressed in black arrived sadness, first. Hidden in her dark clothes she carries the memories of your smile, the serenity of your voice, the sweetness of your kisses, the strength of each of your hugs that your arms offered for any reason. In her pockets she carries 98 years of memories, from your childhood in Aguilas, your adolescence as the first and best student of life, your adulthood as the responsible husband and father, that she is taking today to new horizons.

But our rainbow has also the WHITE of your innocence. You made a century of choices in life, so that the justice of love would triumph. You were our best defense against everything and everybody planting in our heart the strength for any possibility of life, and from them grew a crop of Happiness. Happy our home and childhood, work, studies, play. Happy the abundance of care, and happy even the scarcity in a long post civil war.

GREEN is this fertile field that with your effort you plowed seed by seed, alone, counting only with your determination. In it you designed the goals that would take you to be the first and at that time, the only, professor of English of dozens of generations of students. It was also there where it grew the hope to win a battle to history, to make this a better world. Your idealism is contagious and in it we will always follow you, blindly.

RED is the love that will remain alive, because you made its path eternal. Used, used daily, infinitely used love, made of close-afar, present-absent, from us to you-from you to the world “I love yous”. Love generously shared from dawn to forever.

BLUE is your kindness, and the peace with which you built the roof of our house. It is also de color of those eyes where you saw yourself daily. She is waiting for you, willing to close the cycle of your absence by her side. It is in the happiness of that road that you begin today, in which your memory will live, eternally.

Juan Diego Campoy Coronado

La fuerza de tu mente esculpió el prodigio de nuestra existencia. 

La poesía de tu corazón, te hizo nuestro ejemplo de vida.

Venimos a decirte adiós, o quizás solo, ¡hasta luego!, llenos de un arco iris de emociones que tu vida supo sembrar en nuestro corazón. Vestida de negro llegó primero la tristeza. Entre sus ropas oscuras lleva envueltos los recuerdos de tu risa, la serenidad de tu voz, la dulzura de tus besos, la fortaleza de cada abrazo que los tuyos daban por cualquier razón. En sus bolsillos guarda 98 años de memorias, desde tu infancia en Aguilas, tu adolescencia salesiana, tu madurez responsable de esposo y padre, que hoy se lleva a otros horizontes.

Pero nuestro arco iris de emociones tiene también el BLANCO de tu inocencia. Un siglo –casi- de elecciones en la vida para que triunfara la justicia del amor. Tu fuiste nuestra mejor defensa, frente a todo y todos. Tu sembraste en nuestro corazón, cualquier posibilidad de vida y sobre ella, creció la cosecha de la palabra FELIZ. Felices nuestro hogar y la infancia, el trabajo, el estudio, los juegos. Feliz la abundancia de cariño, y feliz incluso la escasez de una larga posguerra.

VERDE  es este campo fértil que con tu esfuerzo plantaste semilla a semilla en solitario y contando solo con tu tesón. En él trazaste las metas que te convertirían en el primer –y entonces único- profesor de inglés de decenas de generaciones de estudiantes. También allí nació la esperanza de poder ganarle un pulso a la historia para crear un mundo mejor. Tu idealismo es contagioso y en él te seguiremos siempre a ciegas.

ROJO es el amor que seguirá vivo, porque así labraste tú su camino. Usado, usadísimo amor, hecho “te quieros” cercanos - lejanos, presentes- ausentes, nuestros a ti, tuyo para los tuyos. Amor a manos llenas desde el amanecer hasta el infinito.

AZUL es tu bondad, y es la paz con la que edificaste nuestro techo. Es también el color de esos ojos en los que te miraste siempre. Ella te espera ya, deseosa de cerrar el ciclo de tu ausencia. Y es en la alegría de ese camino que hoy recorres, en la que vivirá eternamente tu recuerdo.

Tus hijos,

María del Pilar, Diego Alberto †,

Francisca Isabel, Vicente Lázaro

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 F. ISABEL CAMPOY is the author of numerous children’s books in the areas of poetry, theatre, stories, biographies, and art. As a researcher she has published extensively bringing to the curriculum an awareness of the richness of the Hispanic culture. She is an educator specialized in the area of literacy and home school interaction, topics on which she lecturers nationally. An internationally recognized scholar devoted to the study of language acquisition, a field in which she started publishing in l973 after obtaining her degree in English Philology from Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain; and post graduate work in Reading University in England, and UCLA in the United States. Among others, she is the recipient of Junior Guild Award, ALA Notable Book Award, San Francisco Library Award, and the 2005 Reading the World Award from the University of San Francisco.

Visit Isabel at www.isabelcampoy.com