"You know, we are the most beautiful"
Dear friends,
this little article wants to be a small reflection and consideration regarding the emotions I experience every day within my family. I have a 47-year-old daughter with cerebral damage and since I have been a subscriber to Ombre e Luci for several years, I find in the magazine the strength to carry on.
I want to recall on this occasion the figure of a great woman and a dear friend of Fede e Luce, Mariangela Bertolini. I always read her editorials and in her words I found stimuli that encouraged me and strengthened my will to overcome the daily difficulties. An article she wrote and that I remember with true pleasure is: Beauty and disability, where she explains well the relationship that exists and unites beauty to disability. Beauty understood as gratitude and thankfulness toward the love lavished in helping people in difficulty. The article ends with the questions a girl with Down syndrome asks her mother: Mamma why does everyone on the street look at us? The mother, with a small tear, replies: You know, we are the most beautiful.
The words of the moved mother try to give courage to the girl.
I too have experienced emotions somewhat different with my daughter. I was sitting reading a newspaper, when my daughter came close and gave me little pats on the shoulder. This happened several times and at a certain point I calmly say to her: Peppuccia, you're a little rascal. A few seconds had passed when she came to hug me and her lips would not leave my face. Here lies the beauty, in the recognition that she valued the care and assistance we give, and with the kiss she wanted to make amends. Beauty in disability is the gratitude and affection we receive and this strengthens our spirit and increases the feeling of faith.
Mimmo Sinacori, Nuovo Germoglio, Mazara del Vallo
I need to make friends
My name is Emiliano, I am almost 42 years old, I have not had many friends and no experience with women. In 2008 on a September afternoon I walked into a dance school. There I met Marco, choreographer, dancer and founder of the school, I greeted him and asked him "I need to make friends" and he replied "Yes, dance with the others and make friends" I left happy. There were free demonstration lessons and then I started attending the school in the beginners' salsa course. I got to know many people especially two sisters one of whom I liked very much I remember that we used to go out sometimes with the dance group and we were doing well, then suddenly things started to decline, they made me take a train alone and I went to Bologna with a fever making me spend 400 euros on a travel package but no one from my group participated because the package was only for the instructors... after the lesson I court this girl by writing her a love letter and giving her a little gift. The morning after when I wake up I see a message on my mobile phone, writing me a poem she told me she was with someone else I was very hurt, I wasn't eating and wasn't sleeping either....I lost my enthusiasm for dancing...even at the parish I have unpleasant memories, when I was little and went to catechism and to school they played a lot of tricks on me because I am a fragile person. Since 2014 I have been with Fede e Luce and I must say that I feel very well there, I have started little by little to settle in with simple people once or twice a month. We meet, we do casetta or we go out to eat somewhere all together. What I like most are the summer camps because I can't wait to pack my bags and leave. For this I want to thank the Lord and I hope to find a girl or a woman who heals my broken heart and accepts me for what I am and not for what I have.
"Come here, let me give you a kiss!". How many times did Teresa say this to us and it was the occasion for a soft embrace, full of affection. Teresa was like that, a concentrate of tenderness and friendship, a great heart open to everyone, capable of reaching even those people who close themselves most within themselves.
Teresa Belmonte left us last September 25th, tried by years of suffering increasingly difficult to bear. A difficult passage for her husband Gianni Muia, her children Stefano and Roberto, for all of us in the Lombard communities and beyond. Those who have been in Fede e Luce for many years carry a thousand memories in their heart, but even those who arrived recently knew her well because Teresa, with Gianni, was always present, even when her health played bad tricks on her.
She was there at the first summer camps, at Capizzone, at Broni, in the eighties, up to the last Cesenatico, when the suffering was more than evident. She was there at the pilgrimages, even in the rain at Sotto il Monte last March to cross the holy door in the Jubilee of Mercy. She was there at the days that brought together many communities. Her smile is remembered by friends in Rome as well as those in the South, whom she met in Fatima where she wanted to arrive despite a thousand difficulties in 2012, and at the national pilgrimage of 2015, at that so touching encounter with Pope Francis.
She was there, not in a trivial way, but present with her whole self. Little by little, she became for everyone "Mamma Terry": many young people and also many friends had started to call her mamma, because her vocation was precisely this, to be a mother. A mother who welcomes with her embrace, who lets others play, who listens and knows how to indicate the right words when it is easy to get lost.
The last farewell, in the Milanese church of San Vittore al Corpo, was sad and sweet at the same time. There was a chance to say thank you for her contagious laughter, her front door always open, the dishes cooked with passion, for her ability to point to Jesus as the compass of her life, the precious friend who is the first to be invited to every gathering. Cousins and siblings told of their Teresa, a beautiful person, capable of giving so much to everyone. And a priest friend also revealed to us how much help she had given to African children, to whom she donated money, school supplies, toys.
Teresa left us a great lesson even in the darkest days, always appealing to the value of friendship, to our being a great family in which each person has an important and irreplaceable place. Now we think of her in the community that has formed up there, with Pinuccio, Stefano (who spoke to her in a dream in her final days), Luca and many others.
Goodbye mamma Terry, live the fullness of life with your smile that brings joy.
Angela
Will I ever be able to...?
I know a Daniel who is 16 years old: he cannot and will never be able to get up from his chair and walk, he will never be able to comb his hair or scratch his head if it itches because his hands can't reach "up there"; he will never be able to go to the bathroom in peace; for everything everything he has to ask another person. Sometimes he has terrible fits of rage and screams; often he stays silent and depressed or repeats the same thing many times.
Why?
I know an Ibra. He is 17 years old. He is always lying in a wheelchair that supports him from all sides. He is tall, or rather he is long more than 1 meter 70: moving him is always more difficult. His mother, his father, a helper do everything everything for him. He has never been able to say a word, only a few little cries. Nor will he ever.
Why?
I know a Paola. She is 8 years old. She lives in a technical bed. She cannot, she will never be able to get up, nor say a word, nor taste the flavor of a food (she is fed through a Peg: a little tube that goes directly into the stomach). Perhaps she sees something. She will never be able to breathe normally: every four or five minutes a small machine suctions the phlegm from her throat, which would otherwise suffocate her.
Why?
Many years ago Fede e Luce Italia went on a pilgrimage to Assisi. Jean Vanier came. Carlo Maria Martini came (a great man, a true Christian, an enlightened bishop).
Bishop Carlo Maria confirmed a girl who had been blind and deaf-mute from birth. Even after so many years I can still see the imposing figure in the red cardinal's cloak touching the forehead of the small dark-haired girl and all of us pressed close around them. Then Martini read the page of the Gospel, with the episode of the man blind from birth and the disciples who ask: who has sinned? He or his parents? And the mysterious reply: neither he nor his parents, but it is so that the glory of God may shine forth. But what glory are we talking about?
Then a possible answer came to me: that the glory of God be manifested in the great flowering of affections (of love) that we so often see manifest around and together with these wounded people and that makes their life worthy of being lived?
Is this not a manifestation of God who is love?
So then, Giovanni (probably) will not have a wife, he will not have a little girl to cuddle. He does however have many people who love him; he can look, listen to music, the wind, the voices, he can stroke a cat… in short he "can" a great many things: his path to feeling happy, despite what he cannot have or do, is to look as often as possible at the many things he can have and enjoy.
Mariangela Bertolini used to say, with a "very wounded" daughter, a prophet for people wounded more or less gravely: when I go to the other side I have to ask the Lord some questions! Now she has gone: I believe she finally has the certain answer to that immense "why?".
Sergio Sciascia