Since way back in April 1996 I have been a volunteer with the Associazione Peter Pan onlus, when I met Marisa, the mother of Emanuele, a classmate of my daughter Cristiana in secondary school, who had died of a tumour three years earlier. When she later found out that I had joined the world of retirees, Marisa convinced me, with her great enthusiasm, to take part in the adventure of setting up a welcoming home where children receiving treatment in the oncology ward of the Bambino Gesù hospital in Rome could stay, together with their families — grandparents and little brothers and sisters included — coming from all regions of Italy and beyond (over these 15 years, 11% of the families hosted have been foreign). This was indeed the purpose of the Associazione Peter Pan l'amico del bambino oncologico, founded on 16 November 1994 by a group of parents of children ill with cancer and treated at the Bambino Gesù hospital in Rome.
I will let Marisa recall the beginnings of this adventure…
"Gianna, do you remember? Do you remember how it began? In the ward, during our children's cycles of therapy, we had never crossed paths. But someone at the hospital had decided that we absolutely had to meet, sensing that something good could come out of your overflowing generosity and my stubborn creativity. We made an appointment together with Walter, another father. Naturally, both of us being scatterbrained and vague, we hadn't told each other which of the two gates we would meet at, and so we waited quite a while, one on one side, one on the other, before Walter arrived to sort things out.
From this trio, Peter Pan was born. Without even planning it, we divided up the tasks. After all, you had for some time been "working" in the hospital, in the ward that was like home to you, even after Maura had gone. You brought, as always, your sunny disposition and sense of humour into those rooms, with which you managed one way or another to draw out a smile.
I, on the other hand, worked outside, busy chasing my chimera: that fixed idea I had brought back from Minnesota, that utopia which even you, from time to time, pretended to believe in. I wanted to create in Rome a home for those who were far from their own. A home for those who could not afford to pay at least 60,000 lire a day to stay beside their sick child, and were therefore forced to sleep in their car or on a folding chair in the ward. I had stayed in such a home, when years earlier I had been compelled to emigrate to America in search of health for Emanuele.
I knew from experience, therefore, how important it would be and how many problems it would solve. But homes like that did not yet exist, and everyone thought I was mad. I spent whole days going around exploring every inch of the Gianicolo and the whole area around San Pietro. Then someone gave me the address of Villa Lante in Trastevere, in via San Francesco di Sales, where I went immediately. What a wonderful place! How happy the children would be in the large park surrounding the convent, which climbs all the way up to the Lanterna del Gianicolo! In response to my request the nuns said yet another "no." Leaving through the great gate of the villa, I felt as though I had hit rock bottom — that very rock bottom one truly needs to hit for a miracle to happen. And a miracle it was! To my right I glimpsed an abandoned and dilapidated building with weeds overrunning the threshold of a small door that must once have been green. I climbed the three steps leading up to it and what a "heavenly vision!" — a vast mouldy hall, a large window with broken panes, cobwebs and dust everywhere! There it is, I've found it! This will be the House of Peter Pan!"
And a couple of years later that was precisely the House of Peter Pan… since then 15 years have passed, Peter Pan has grown, so much so that in 2004 and 2007 two further facilities were opened in an effort to meet the constant and pressing requests for help; in the three houses, more than 450 families have been welcomed to date.
Over time our relations with the nuns of Villa Lante, our neighbours, have changed: by now a warm and affectionate collaboration binds us, to the point that the nuns have now granted us a lease on the very house we had asked for so many years ago!"
The Grande of Peter Pan, inaugurated on 16 November, thus brings together the three existing facilities and will moreover increase the number of rooms by 30%, reaching the capacity to host up to 33 families at a time.
We volunteers, the staff and the families themselves trust that we will continue to receive economic and moral support from so many people, from small and large businesses, and from public and private bodies, which has allowed us to offer the possibility of being together with families living through the same ordeal, with whom to share daily anguish and hopes, with the certainty of being understood completely. The spontaneous solidarity that forms among the families helps, little by little, to rebuild a new equilibrium in order to carry on and to survive in such extreme circumstances. The great house of Peter Pan, too, as the other facilities have always been, will be very colourful, full of communal spaces where life unfolds together — children, volunteers who take turns in the various services (cleaning, play and, where possible, study with the little ones, and much more), parents and professional staff. Each of us, in carrying out our own service, always keeps in mind the spirit of our Peter Pan:
We cannot add days to life, but life to days
And we try to do our best even when difficult moments are lived through in the House.
On the website www.peterpanonlus.it there is much more information about the association, events, projects, photographs and information on how to contribute or collaborate, and training courses for volunteers.
I am very glad to have met Marisa on that distant April day, because in all these years from knowing so many wonderful parents who have taught me and kept on doing so, to be stronger in living my own life.
Rosalba Di Marco, 2011
