"All my life I have no regrets. I enjoy it. I suffer. But that's a part of life. If you don't suffer, you don't know what joy is."

Aldo Boschin sucked me in with those words.

An 89-year old defiantly and eloquently staring mortality in the face.

On the day I first met Aldo he was putting pen to paper to buy his funeral. A no-service, no-attendance cremation.

Aldo, who was purchasing a pre-paid funeral, had agreed to take part in Lateline's report on Australia's funeral industry.

He was matter of fact.

"Even if you think I am a bastard, so I am a bastard, but I owe you nothing," he said.

His friend and carer, Laura Cauchi, told me Aldo had lost contact with his family but she did not know why. She had known him for more than 30 years, but he had been reluctant to speak about it.

A week after the story went online, Lateline received an email.

"My birth name is Adriana Boschin. I believe that Aldo Boschin is my father," it said.

"I have been looking for him for a long time. The last time I saw my father I was only 16."

Aldo Boschin and his family in Sydney, before his wife took the children back to Italy. ( ABC News )

I contacted Laura and we agreed we needed to get some proof before we could let Aldo know. He had just been admitted back to hospital and we could take no risks.

At first we heard nothing. Laura was worried. I decided to chase it up with email, but it bounced. The address was wrong. I tried again, adding what I thought may just be a missing letter and it went through.

We had contact. And confirmation. Birth dates and names of his four children confirmed he was her father.

Aldo was told. He was thrilled. All we had to do, was wait for Aldo to get out of hospital. He wanted to be home before he called so he could have a shave and make himself presentable.

It was 45 years since he has seen his children. He wanted to look his best.

Aldo Boschin's children. Date unknown. ( Supplied: The Boschin family )

Loading

Over a weekend, I talked with his daughter, setting in place plans to arrange Skype contact.

Aldo comes from a time before internet. He was thrilled with the idea of Skype.

And then, the day was here.

Aldo was nervous. So was his daughter Adriana. She had her own daughter and her husband by her side at her home in California.

Aldo's second daughter, Aura, in Arkansas, was also hoping to connect in.

And then, we did. Aldo was seeing his daughters for the first time in more than 45 years.

They were 16 and 18 when they last saw their father and now here they were.

Each of them married, with families of their own.

Aldo's daughter Adriana and his granddaughter talk to Aldo over Skype. ( ABC News: Adrian Wilson )

Aldo was momentarily speechless when he discovered his teenage daughters had become grandmothers in the time since he last saw them.

Aldo told his daughters of the years he spent trying to find them after his ex-wife took them back to Italy. He was working on the Snowy Hydro scheme at the time.

He paid for private detectives in an effort to track his family down, but it was the days before the internet and the trail went cold. He eventually gave up, fearing his children didn't want him in their lives.

Amid the tears, there was laughter at remembering the nicknames they had for each other. Adriana, had once been called "Yaya", the result of her younger sister being unable to pronounce her name.

Aldo Boschin's son Denny, who died in a car accident 34 years ago. ( Supplied: The Boschin family )

But it was when Aldo asked whether all four of his children were fine, that the saddest news had to be told.

His son Denny, had been killed in a car accident 34 years ago. He was 20.

Amid the grief Adriana called on her father to focus on what they have, not what they have lost.

Forty-five years after they last saw each other, a new beginning has been forged.

For me, it was time to get to work.

And as the saying goes, the best stories are the ones that are easiest to write, you just tell it like it is.