"When everything collapses, only the essential remains", a son's farewell to his mother

"When everything collapses, only the essential remains", a son's farewell to his mother


There are a mother and a son. She's about to leave, forever, and if it's impossible to stay maybe she's not leaving in a serene way. But is it really possible to make sure that everything is serene? And how do you say goodbye forever? Where? What is needed? Little, very little, as told by this son, protagonist together with his mother of one of the finalist stories of the literary prize dedicated to men who have been close to a woman with cancer. On the #afiancodelcoraggio website until 8 June it is possible to vote - expressing up to three preferences - to help choose the three finalists.

An army of toy soldiers against the disease: when the tumor strikes the mother


“Melena: the term that conceals a horrendous gastric haemorrhage revealing a definitive sentence sounds so innocuous, almost pleasant: by now it is widespread everywhere. One can only, perhaps, think of a serene accompaniment. My old lady. Always present in my life and that it would never be again: I'm not capable, I don't have the mental strength, aware that I can't do anything more useful for my old lady. Once at home, I watched her pain cling to me like a contagion: in bed, in the throes of nightmares, she tossed and moaned.

So, after another collapse, the decision: she deserves not to end up like this, this is no longer the place to live the last times. "I'm with you, I'll always be there. But no longer at home, despite your wish. Your bed must not be a grave before its time!” I think.

An army of toy soldiers against the disease: when the tumor strikes the mother



Torn between heart and mind, in a difficult solution for this "serene accompaniment", I try to find the courage to ensure the best for those who have cared for in the past and now must be cared for. To face the inevitable.
Certainly, it is not a triumph: the return is a wandering in an empty and gloomy house, where everything calls to her, as if she were to return at any moment, in a hidden hope. But I am aware that, together with her, our whole old world ends.
The memory goes to that last evening, in front of the men in orange from 118: she who opens her eyes from the painful torpor and smiles almost happily:
"Hello, we have guests! Would you like a coffee?”
“No, ma'am. We're OK. We've come to pick her up, let's go for a ride."
"Really? How beautiful..."
How much tenderness: they were taking her away, perhaps never to return and she was happy to see new people and to go "for a ride".

I keep my word in hospice: I'm always with her. I know I have to be there, for this rediscovered Love that will be engraved in stone as a future memory of a serene and harmonious farewell.
The sanitary ware has done their job. For a moment she returned to what she used to be: clean, combed, even her nails painted pink. She sees me and lights up in a big smile: «You are here!»
Perhaps, in her, the peace of one who resigns, the last of the five stages of pain. Or the unique feeling that unites a mother to her son. She is passionate about coloring a drawing, she shows it to me enthusiastic about the result: «It's Christmas soon, I have a lot of work to do. I have to do the decorations, put the pompoms on the billboard». One Christmas... maybe there won't be another one. That's why you need to make everything special.

The path of life is circular: there, in exile, but surrounded by care and affection, she finds herself in a sort of "return to origins". Not to youth, but to childhood itself, which is lost as you grow up, but is regained as you get older. Perhaps being cared for again brings us back to basic needs, to the point of marveling at the little things that in normal times seem trivial or insignificant.
When everything else collapses, only the essential remains: tenderness. Together with the immense love of what has been, in a sad nostalgia for the time spent together”.



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