This memory of Mariangela is my testimony to how essential friendship is in each of our lives.
We met when we were barely thirteen, both students at the Nazareth Institute in Rome. What began in those middle school years never really ended, even when distance made it impossible to see or hear from each other often.
Mariangela was my schoolmate, my friend—the one who helped me, through her example and her words, to survive moments of sadness and hardship. But she was also the one with whom I shared times of real peace and joy.
We prepared for our final exams together, studying subjects that neither of us particularly enjoyed and helping each other through. Mariangela's humor and natural cheerfulness made those long hours hunched over textbooks feel lighter. Even now, so many years later, I remember with a kind of ache those exhausting July days in 1952—mornings at the Mazzarotto house, afternoons at mine, the two of us bent over our notes, reciting rules and dates and theorems, punctuated by jokes and laughter.
After we passed our exams, we never stopped seeing each other. A few years later, Mariangela's help became something far more precious. Among my dearest memories is a letter she sent from Scomigo in September 1955. I was in crisis: my father had died, and I felt I had no strength left to return to my studies. Mariangela—who had experienced the same devastating loss years before—wrote to me with great power: "You must take life each day as it comes, with all the courage you can find. Life is full of thorns and pain, yes, but also of so much joy: think of nature, how it fills us with gladness; think of a beautiful book, a beautiful concert, of friends!" She gave me another great gift that fall: she brought me into the circle of friends at the University Chapel, where I met Don Gian Maria Rotondi. Through her and him, I found my way back to some peace. I will never forget the week we spent together in January 1956 in the snow at Passo Rolle.
Our friendship continued steadily through the years. After I married and moved to Matera, we spoke often by phone, and whenever I returned to Rome, I never missed gathering with Mariangela and our other beloved classmates at the Nazareth Institute.
But life brought us close again during a trial beyond measure. In late October 1978, I lost my child—little Andrea, only four months old. Just twenty days later, Mariangela lost her daughter, Maria Francesca—Chicca. On November 2, Mariangela wrote to me: "I wish I could speak with you, to tell you that some things are felt deeply in the heart only when you stand beside someone who is living them—truly, only when you live them yourself. You know that we too are climbing the hill to Calvary with our Maria Francesca. This is why I dare to speak to you, why I dare break into your silence and your tears. Otherwise I would feel unworthy to tell you: be brave, Ezia. You are not alone.
"Let us hold each other's hands across distance, across silence, across mysteries too great to bear, and let us look together at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus has made us brothers and sisters, so that we might stand with Him and be saviors of this broken world. Let us ask Him together to help us carry a piece of the Cross that weighs too much, that seems unbearable. Above all, let us ask Him to help us feel that nothing—nothing—is ever lost. Everything lived in His love endures for eternity." She closed this letter with these words: "Love is measured more by the trials it bears than by the joys it brings, don't you think? Those years we spent together on our books bound us forever, and that is beautiful. We must thank the Lord for giving us this experience of a friendship that is truly unique."
My one regret: two years ago, I finally arranged for her to visit me in Matera with some of our other friends. But just before she was to leave Rome, Mariangela fell ill and had to cancel. Yet even then I felt her close, because her sisters Tea and Lucia came in her place, and their presence let me feel again the warmth and joy of the Mazzarotto household during our lycée years—those days when we studied together and prepared Goldoni's plays under their mother's careful, loving direction.
This is why I have written this testimony: true friendship, as Mariangela wrote to me, lasts forever.
Ezia Schiavone, 2014
