I wish I could write down all the emotions that ignite when I think of March eleven years ago.
The longing for a child is so strong it makes you believe you can overcome any obstacle.
As a doctor, I was privileged in how my colleague told me the hard truths about my unborn daughter's health. I felt aware of the immense power we have gained by knowing in advance what awaits us at birth—and yet equally aware of nature's, of God's, untouched superiority over life itself.
I never seriously considered, not for a moment, refusing to bring into the world the girl growing inside me—a girl with a heart that wouldn't serve her yet, but that would reveal its inadequacy the moment she was born. To continue, to not interrupt the story just begun, struck some as selfishness, others as a reckless choice to face "a calvary" for us and for her. Many followed our journey with respect, perhaps bewilderment, and certainly solidarity. The girl would need a terribly complex operation immediately after birth to survive. I remember the drawings the cardiologist showed us as he explained; it seemed impossible, but he told us other "cases" had been performed successfully, that some children had survived and were still living (I never thought to ask how?). It seemed to me that even the smallest hope of life was worth reaching for against certain death—perhaps without dwelling too long on the how or the after. Knowing how it would end, imagining the dreadful anguish of that terrible day when they told us badly that Margherita hadn't made it. If we had possessed even the slightest sense of what came after—so crushing, so empty, so devoid of words and explanations, especially from the doctor who had guided us with such care and hope—if they had told us we would be left alone and helpless before defeat, perhaps we would not have been so firm in choosing the operation for her. Then, yes, it would have been for selfishness, to avoid that terrible emptiness. But instead she gave us the knowledge of how much life is worth. We feel it in our hearts (precisely in our hearts), with every March that passes, in every emotion shared with our children, with friends, aunts and uncles and grandparents, in every chance to tell this fragment of our life. Reason often turns us toward pain, toward loss, toward innocent suffering. But the heart tells us that above all there is Love.
Francesca De Rino, 2006