Another fifteenth of October will come. The seventh for me, the first for many parents, a date like any other for those who do not know the reality of mourning during pregnancy and after birth.
One date, one day, 24 hours. What is the point of “celebrating” it? What sense does it make to remember all together all over the world our children physically distant and known for a whisker, but today loved as and more than the first day? What’s the point of risking suffering, reopening our wounds overflowing with affection? And again, does it make sense to “sadden” or “scare” those who don’t know? Does it make sense to expose yourself to the world as “grieving parents”? Or would it be better to keep quiet, close, trying to forget October 15th, its meaning, the wave of light and all of it?
On the first fifteenth of October in Italy, with the feverish unscrupulousness of mourning so fresh as to be alive, I and four other mothers (there is still the photo somewhere on the site) we met in Florence, in Piazzale Michelangelo, with the heart hanging literally on the wire of 10 balloons. That hanging thread, the hands clinging in the desperate desire to hold them, beyond the absence. It was not a carefree moment, but it was a profound moment, full of meaning, of emotional and spiritual closeness, full of respect and love.
We counted that day, we wondered if we could have done more. For our children, who are not only our belly children (Lapo, Federico, Elia, Tortellina, Paolo, Gabriele and Linda) but all the children of each parent affected by mourning.
To offer some opportunities for relief, sharing and hope to their parents, hidden behind walls of words such as “they are not real mourning” “children remake themselves” “parents of unborn children”. As if the children were invisible and incorporeal until they decide to be born alive. Never born, above all, a horrendous Italian mess, with that “never” to indicate something that never was, that does not exist as such.
Fifteenth October, a special day in which children “canceled” as “never existed”, come back alive, through the memory, the testimony and the strength of their parents.
Because if death is irreversible, so is life. And the short or very short life span of our children (embryos, abortions, itg or fetuses, too often called only so by the public opinion that prefers not to know that for them there were unique names and nicknames waiting for them), has a profound meaning, for some almost sacred.
October 15 makes sense if it serves to give respect to bereaved parents, their bereaved ones, and their children.
In Italy we need all parents and common sense workers (there are more and more, and for this I am grateful), so that here too it is normal, and respectable, to receive care, comfort and support to learn to live with mourning. and the physical absence of their children.
We also need your presence, to learn that a grieving mother is still a mother grappling with the most difficult task of all: transforming the love of kisses not given, of missed hugs, of glances never crossed into an incorporeal message and in any case here I’m.
At the bottom of the balloon thread, there are the hearts of parents who embrace the hearts of their children from small lives.
Help us to make October 15th known in your city.
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