Dearest Ombre e Luci, my faithful companion since 1983 through so many days shadowed by sorrow, fear, desperation—and also dreams, hopes, and always, always fear.
I want to apologize if I cannot find words for what I felt when my son was small, in his wheelchair, and then as the years passed. He is thirty-five now, works, and fights each day to be freer from the weight of his blindness—congenital blindness—and from a health so fragile it threatens at any moment. With a sense of humor, he has told me many times that his blindness isn't really the heaviest burden. It's the instability of his health that wears on him.
What astonishes me is his sensitivity to the moods of others, and above all his hunger to live—expressed in the way he treasures the smallest joys of each day. He loves television; it keeps him connected to people. He savors every invitation, every lunch, every walk. He loves hearing about books, the wit of Neri Marcorè, the voice of Milly Carlucci, whom he has always called "the fairy." Until he was eighteen, he had beautiful curls. They fell away quickly, lost to inherited hair loss.
I suffered greatly over his appearance, too—over how he looked, how different he was from what I had imagined. I rebelled against it. A double grief. But now I respect his dignity as a person, as a man so in love with life that on his birthday, holding me close, he said, "Mom, I'm glad I was born." And when I stood silent, moved beyond words, he repeated it, with emphasis: "And I don't say that lightly."
I embrace you with all my heart, wishing you the strength and hope to reach out to people and families who feel profoundly alone, even as they live lives like everyone else's. We often feel like strangers even among friends and family, because we must hide our melancholy, our pain—partly to escape that horrible judgment: "If we all put down our crosses, everyone would pick their own back up again."
The only real comfort is to be welcomed, truly welcomed, and respected in silence—not with empty phrases spoken in a hurried, indifferent voice. Thank you for your deep affection, proven year after year through your constant, faithful work to stand beside us.
Silvana, 2012