Condolences To Ghilotti Family From The ‘U Family’

It should’ve been the beginning. Instead, a most unexpected ending.

Stories like this absolutely destroy me. Almost three decades later I still remember a junior high classmate who was murdered, high school colleagues who perished or other acquaintances and friends of friends that were taken way too soon.

I’m forever haunted by young people meeting their demise well before their time and see it as the most unfair aspect of life—despite firmly knowing our next breath is never promised and that we are conditioned to try and live every moment like it’s our last.

I didn’t have to become a parent to know there is not greater tragedy than a parent burying a child—the gravity of this so heavy, there is no word for—like “widow”, when someone loses a spouse or “orphan”, for kids left parent-less.

This is no easier for siblings losing their closest confidants, before real life has gotten underway—forever thinking of them and wondering what the life they were robbed of could’ve become.

Dino Ghilotti was from Marin County in Northern California and based on what’s been posted online the past two days, he came from a large, loving Italian family. He recently earned his business degree, having graduated in a ceremony at the University of Miami on Friday night.

Out late celebrating on Saturday, he perished as a passenger in a two-car accident early Sunday morning. It was Mother’s Day and his family was in South Florida with him, celebrating his accomplishment. Next up, a return to the Bay Area to earn his place in the family’s construction business—a fine blueprint, for the young, accomplished twentysomething.

A new chapter was upon him—and for a family who just spent the past few years missing their son who was attending college three time zones away, counting the minutes until he returned.

Instead of the a triumphant return and new beginning, they’ll now bring him home to his final resting place. A more tragic script could not be written. There are no words, sounds or emotions for this level of heartbreak.

Opposite of Dino, I grew up in South Florida and finished my education in Gainesville while my close-knit family relocated to Southern California. I remember the joy of heading west for summertime or holiday breaks, as well as the pain that came from saying goodbye, knowing months would pass without seeing each other again—but someday we’d all be reunited on the left coast.

Almost two decades later, I still have dreams of being in school, semesters shy of graduation, missing home and that empty feeling I’d have when returning to the airport in Orlando, ready for a trek back to the University of Florida—San Diego still on the brain, with a lukewarm burrito still rolling around in my backpack.

While Dino was heading back from wherever his final night took him, I was out with friends in San Diego, taking in some live music as an all-time favorite artist was in town–Stephen Kellogg—debuting songs from his forthcoming album “Blunderstone Rookery”.

The first single is “Crosses”—Kellogg’s tribute to makeshift memorials on the side of the road, commemorating love ones last as they drove here or there, living life and making memories. He sings of those lost stories that the passers-by will never know—that friends and family can never forget.

“Hold on to memories, look for a sign that.
Talk to gravestones that never seem to talk back.
Never knowing what could have been.
Left with the hope of seeing him again.
Left with the hope of seeing her again.

It’s easy now to recognize that there were crosses in the road.
Secrets that were never told.
The river and the train, so different by the same.
They were just getting where they need to go.
Somewhere far from heaven only knows.

All this time I’m still haunted by your face tonight.
I think of you on your darkest night.
I wish that I could save you from the wreckage of your last goodbye.
When I’m lonely I got see you and the crosses in the road.
Pay our respects to crosses in the road.”

The lyrics rattled me Saturday evening, before the context of this tragic story. After I’d read what I read in The Miami Herald on Sunday morning, I sat there devastated; destroyed for a family I don’t even know, simply by that common thread of knowing the love one has for each other in a big, close-knit family. When something happens to a member of the tribe, everyone suffers for it.

Dino, thank you for choosing the University of Miami and Ghilotti family—thank you for boldly allowing your son to follow the path that took him to Coral Gables. As the father of a three-year-old little girl, I simply cannot imagine what has just become your reality. You are being forced to live out every parent’s greatest fear. I am gutted for all of you.

Our family-owned business and this U Family are heartbroken for your unimaginable tragedy and wish God’s grace on you during this time of suffering. Go Canes.

Christian Bello has been covering Miami Hurricanes athletics since the mid-1990s. After spending almost a decade as a columnist for CanesTime, he launched allCanesBlog.com. – the official blog for allCanes.com : The #1 Canes Shop Since 1959. Bello has joined up with XOFan.com and will be a guest columnist at CaneInsider.com this fall. Follow him on Twitter @ChristianRBello.

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