His mother says:
"Christmas is beautiful, but for me it's just another day because I'm alone with him. Massimo is sad because his father left us two years ago.
I can't talk to him the way his father did. Massimo keeps waiting for him to appear suddenly, the way he used to, to cuddle him: 'Beautiful boy, you've got blue eyes!' Massimo would laugh and wait for him to make him laugh again and again with his jokes. Now I look at his photograph, above Massimo's big wheelchair, and I want to say to him: 'You take care of it! Pray to the Lord to give me the strength to care for him in the years ahead.'
I found good help, because alone, with all the aches of old age, I couldn't manage. A couple from Ecuador lives with us; they're affectionate and try to be there for us. But at Christmas they may go to lunch at a sister's place. So the two of us will spend that beautiful day hoping for a visit—maybe a grandchild, or a friend from Fede e Luce. You see, people my age are all in heaven now. I'm the only one left. I put my trust in the Lord. I always tell him, 'Whatever you will.'"
Massimo is 41. His mother Rossana is 71. I picture them again, as if in a film, the three of them bound together by this great, all-consuming love for their son: they present him as a treasure, they interpret the sounds that accompany his deep, mysterious laughter. They know when he's tired, when he's hungry or thirsty; they're moved to tears when he grows excited because someone sings a song he loves.
When Rossana goes shopping and Massimo gets a bit restless, the clerk takes him in hand, wheeling him out of the store—all those good things excite him—and heads toward the ramp that leads to a church. By now she knows, from hearing his mother tell it, that Massimo has a special love for entering a church, for the silence and the mystery of that presence, which he understands better than any of us.
One day Rossana joked with me: "If he had been well, I think my son would have become a priest!" Certainly Massimo, in his family, has proclaimed that Love which his grandparents lived fully with him and for him.
Someone will visit him at Christmas, this boy who has grown a little sadder since his father is gone—to speak for a while with his brave mother, for whom Christmas should be more than just another day.