Give me the telephone. Long live the telephone!
How could I have made it through these thirty years without hearing the voices of all those brave mothers who sustained Ombre e Luci with their courage? So much for email, for connections, for all the "real-time" communication that most of the time drives me to distraction—first, because I barely understand any of it; second, and more important, because I need their voices the way I need to breathe. I need their stories told to me directly, as they live them.
In recent times, when so much has been said about the family, I have not heard—as I wished I would—a single hymn of praise for "our mothers" who in their own families have welcomed, raised, followed, and loved a child with a disability. And you cannot speak this word lightly, not if you truly understand what it means: year after year (20, 30, 50!) spending almost every moment beside another human being—dressing her, washing her, feeding her, changing her, lifting her, taking her outside.
I see them in my mind like frames from a film: all those marked faces of children who are now grown men and women. And beside their faces, inevitably, I look with admiration at the faces of their mothers. Young women, they too marked by exhaustion, by sleepless nights, by worries that grow larger and heavier with each passing year. Marked and aged before their time, yet most often smiling and at peace, eager to live, drawing from deep within the strength to go on for him or for her.
I wish I could name every one of you, because each of you is a unique person, and each one deserves to have the sacred story of her family written down: the husband she must encourage and push forward; the other children who need to live their own lives without being crushed or tormented by their brother or sister. The hidden desires, pushed away like half-formed dreams.
The disappointments and resentments sometimes caused by those very people from whom you expected the most help and understanding—your closest relatives, your dearest friends. The dread when your child falls ill, so hard to diagnose because he cannot tell you what hurts. The anguish and terror of an emergency hospital admission or surgery. And that tormenting thought that will not let you sleep: "What will become of him when I am no longer here?"
How can these things be told except by meeting face to face—or at the very least by telephone?
I forget none of your faces. I recognize your voice in my mind, and I never speak of you in the plural. When I say my poor prayers, I call you by name, one by one, and alongside your name is always the name of your son or daughter.
I see, as if you were here beside me, the moment we first met, when you hesitantly introduced me to your treasure. I cannot forget, and I do not know how I could erase from my memory the episodes and adventures we have lived through together. Times when, strengthened by a friendship that binds us forever (as we often say), we found again the desire to live, the joy of laughter, the courage to dance, the pleasure of sitting down to dinner together, the deep silence of a prayer shared that revealed to us the mystery and the greatness of having beside us a child with a disability.
Yes, I would very much like to establish an honorary degree in motherhood for each one of you, presented before the highest authorities, before the press and television, so that all of Italy might know of you, of your courage and your steadfastness. But most of all so that one time—just once—we could say: "What great mothers we have in Italy!"
Mariangela Bertolini, 2007