Death
Despite being elected again to the Italian parliament, Garibaldi spent much of his late years in Caprera. He however supported an ambitious project of land reclamation in the marshy areas of southern Lazio.
In 1879 he founded the "League of Democracy," which advocated universal suffrage, abolition of ecclesiastical property, emancipation of women, and maintenance of a standing army. Ill and confined to a bed by arthritis, he made trips to Calabria and Sicily. In 1880 he married Francesca Armosino, with whom he had previously had three children.
On his deathbed, Garibaldi asked that his bed be moved to where he could gaze at the emerald and sapphire sea. Upon his death on 2 June 1882 at the age of almost 75, his wishes for a simple funeral and cremation were not respected. He is buried on his farm on the island of Caprera alongside his last wife and some of his children.
In 2012, it was announced that Garibaldi's remains would be exhumed to allow descendants to confirm through DNA analysis that the remains in the tomb are indeed those of Garibaldi. If the remains are confirmed as his, there will be a debate about whether to preserve the remains, or to grant his final wish for a simple cremation.
Read more about this topic: Giuseppe Garibaldi
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“To these, whom Death again did wed,
This grave’s the second Marriage-bed.”
—Richard Crashaw (1613?–1649)
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)
“Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)