February, month of life. And in my long wandering up and down Italy (life as a pro-lifer), rock me in the illusion of going to various conventions, conferences, meetings in the parishes, to give something to my , without realizing that the taking from others is infinitely greater.
It always happens, and it happened again a few days ago. At a training course for health workers, the day whose theme was "The long-term care and disability", I could hear the deep experience of life and faith of dr. Mario Melazzini. Many already know it, but for me it was a new feeling , more than a feeling again.
this remarkable man, who in his first fifty years has racked up hits like doctor (oncologist) and as a person, great athlete, husband and father, beautiful, active, full of life, it was found to be prisoner of his body, the victim of one of the most terrible and debilitating diseases of our time: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS.
Lead in black despair, the desire to die was a painful path and natural. The get out, the fruit of grace more pure. "At some point I stopped concentrating on what I could no longer do, to think about what I had yet to give." In the face of those who live in appearance and that base their security on the latest mobile phones and expensive cars ...
"I had the misfortune to get a bit 'late to know the people with disabilities - said Melazzini - as I had met through volunteering, and though I was a believer, look at them with a form of affectionate superficiality, without caring to relate deeply with them. "
Melazzini quoted a piece of the book "The Body" by Umberto Galimberti, which reads: "The eye doctor not met the man, but his illness in his body and he does not read a biography, but a disease " it said, recalling that in our society, talking about disability or illness makes them uncomfortable, because when you are healthy these two conditions do not belong to us, and even provoke a sort of ill-concealed pity for that poor which unfortunately happened to them. But we must begin to integrate the thinking of disability and illness in our way of life, not only because it could happen to anyone of us, but why not one should look to a disabled as something abnormal , but as one of us .
Affirmation weighed in by the intervention of Dr. Mirella Ricci, vice president of the Province of Arezzo, the largest voluntary life, who recalled that one should not begin to quantify the deficit of a person, but the resource . Being able to then go on tiptoe in the lives of others, be able to enter deeply into the world of suffering, it helps to be afraid of little things!
According to a survey by Istat, the disabled in Italy are around 2.6 million, ie 4.8% of the population, without regard to children under 6 years are about 200,000. What can give dignity to these vulnerable people, victims of a clinical instability, often of a functional dependency, or a decreased survival or care pathways not yet identified? Love. The love of those who care for them, because " dignity lies in the eyes of the employer's treatment " ("Dignity and the eye of the beholder", HM Chocinov JCO 2004). Wonderful concept and we find in the book based Melazzini "But what I do differently?" That urge you to read.
But that's not there ... I still see and hear more. For example, the president of AISLA Arezzo Marisa Valesio great. In this old body, now completely captive to the disease, immobile on a wheelchair with a lot of mechanical respirator, his eyes alive, alert and smiling the brain of a person who has made him wake up, and how!, But above all the spirit; before him, a special machine that translates into letters and then words, the look moves dictate what you mean by eye movement. Beside him, the love of a husband who strives not for effort, or by compulsion, but for a mere service rendered by a love that has something superhuman. That serve with joy, that only a big heart can put into practice. I immediately thought that being so popular, despite the inability to cook, wash laundry, iron the shirt of her husband, to be loved just because we exist, it means to be loved for real.
And here is the greeting of Marisa, waiting with religious and unreal silence for over a hundred people who gave up Allegro chatter respectfully to meditate on the paradox of a life extraordinarily serene, in total contrast with the actual physical situation : "I greet you all with joy, I'm glad to be with you. I was not so ... the disease has received a gift from God that I carry on with serenity and strength that gives me every day to the Lord, with whom I go out because I was allowed to know how important life . Silence, then thunderous applause and some tears .... How much wisdom, and how empty I felt I made up and functioning , but from the heart, often devoid of this thickness, this love ...
And Marisa remained attentive, his eyes glued to the dr. Melazzini, now president of the Aisle-Milan, for her friend and brother, companion of adventure, rather than misfortune. And occasionally, a quick dictated the machine, write "nose", and immediately rush to see her husband once, twice, three times, to dry as everyone who is affected by temperature changes, and has the luxury of a normal runny nose.
Well, that day I knew the love, the real one, the one that never ends, that does not ask what the other can give, but who else is, really, with the ability to enjoy simply for his presence, without quantifying the functionality, without asking anything in return. Just like you do with a precious gift.
Sabrina Pietrangeli Paluzzi
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