Girolamo Clemente

My car mechanic friend posted this on August 29 at 8:45 PM

Talk about A lucky break

And malfunction in my pacemaker and I dropped like a pair and died ! Yes I dead kind!!!

We were on our way to Chilliwack Hospital for an appointment and arrived 10 minutes early cross the parking lot up onto this sidewalk and drop dead!

A ladies song Karen crying and trying to revive me and went running into the emergency ward and cold for help

From their luckily everything happened extremely quick Karen was basically picked up and pulled away and they started to try CPR a nurse who was the trainer for CPR push that girl aside and started to do CPR at herself pushing so hard today 10 days later my chest still hurts

That didn’t work and they arrived with defibrillators and zapped me back to breathing

I was in the right place at the right time to still be here and lucky enough to have people who are trained on hand almost immediately

Nobody knows why it happened it just happened my heart just stopped which I think is a similar thing that happened to mutual friend Diane

One thing I can tell you is that there’s no white light on the other side and the worst part just before I revived or became conscious following day following day was a nightmare that I won’t tell you you couldn’t understand it

So happy to be here but they did pull my license for six months but I’m going to buy a lottery ticket I feel lucky in by myself cool car and driver.

 Then there was this:

Girolamo Antonio Clemente

May 13, 1956 - August 30, 2022

We are heartbroken to announce the passing of Girolamo, after a long hard fight with heart disease on Tuesday August 30, 2022.

When I read this last night, 3 September 22, I felt extremely depressed as all my friends around me are dying. My isolation keeps growing. I knew I would have to write this.

After having a couple of boring (but most reliable VW Beetles in Mexico when Rosemary, our two daughters and I moved to Vancouver) I was going to change that by owning and exciting car. My two subsequent Fiat X-19s were exciting but not reliable.

I had those two Fiats repaired by Girolamo Clemente on Clemente European Motors on Kingsway. He was a charmer, but perhaps not as much as his serious (outside) father who was often there. 

Gio & father

Gio, as we all called him, said he was a forensic mechanic who could figure out what was wrong by the noises a car made.

One day he phoned me and told me that he had an exciting car for me at a good price. It was a 1982 Maserati Biturbo. When it ran is was a thrill. But more often the German transmission clunked, the windows did not go up or down and water went into the gasoline, oil into the water and other fluids who knows where.

Henceforth, my Rosemary rightfully dictated we would have reliable German cars. We had three Audis until she succumbed to my idea of a domestic Chevrolet Malibu and my present most reliable Chevrolet Cruze.

But it was Gio who introduced me to what I would call a rite of passage for a man who wants to have an exciting car that makes loud exhaust noises and looks good. That rite of passage slipped into my realization that slipping clutches were not my idea of exciting.

So Gio I offer my thanks for the trip with those Italian cars and I hope you do well wherever you might be now.