March 2020, this date is enough to make us remember everything. It’s as if in the morning, you wake up slowly and you’re still inside the dream you were doing and with your eyes still closed you think: “less bad it was just a dream” then when you can open your eyes you realize that in the dream you are in it now and first who knows what you dreamed maybe nice things. This period will be remembered forever, they will talk about the school books that our grandchildren will study and we ourselves from old will tell them that they were born after, these strange, surreal days.
I wrote the year to remember, not the one to forget as it had occurred to me at the beginning when I decided to write about these days and our fears. Remember yes, we must remember what all this has left us, if when all this leaves us we will still be there.
We think about our lives before this damn virus, and one realizes that it was a very selfish life, everyone thought for himself, to his loved ones, to his own well-being. Now at this exact moment we are divided, everyone locked in their own home, who with family, who with the companion, who alone. But perhaps it is precisely this isolation that makes us understand that there are also others, who have your same anxieties, your own fears, who are alone. It is important not to feel alone right now. And it’s nice when you maybe go and bring the trash bag to the bin at the top of the street and the neighbors who are in the garden cutting the grass greet you with a smile. The neighbor who greeted you only if you just beat us against the terrace and greets you with her hand and asks you how you are and how you pass it. Even a phone call received by mistake, one that has the wrong number, and you start talking and you end up showing up and chatting for half an hour as if you were always friends.
We are in the house, we move just to do the shopping or the pharmacy. The days go by slow punctuated by some business, from preparing meals, maybe with some dish a little more imaginative than the fast ones that we used to prepare during the week. A little chat, a bit of social media, a TV series that was so much you wanted to see. Some video calls with your loved ones. And maybe you try to be serene thinking that you and your parents won’t get sick. You’ve been keeping away from everyone for several days now, you’ve come out very little and with a mask, so you feel comfortable. But when you wake up at night and you can’t get back to sleep, and after a while you turn around and turn around, pick up your cell phone and open Facebook. Along with many messages of optimism, photos of banners and tricolor on the windows, also read articles like the one I found now.
Federico Gorbi Deputy Mayor of Serravalle Pistoiese wrote: “There is a room, at the San Jacopo in Pistoia, in which the clothes of all those who are hospitalized because they are affected by coronavirus are stacked.
I’m abiti that will never be returned to families.
The memory goes to Auschwitz: when I visited that concentration camp, there were mountains of suitcases, shoes, clothes, glasses… that have never been worn by anyone again.
The hospital is not a concentration camp, it is a place of care, but even at the San Jacopo you are experiencing so much suffering.
Relatives of the deceased cannot even see their loved ones one last time.
We do well to sing at the windows, to play down, to argue that “everything will be fine” but let us remember those who will not be able to say “everything went well”: the endless rows of coffins of the Bergamos are teaching us.
We respect the rules, we leave the house only when it is indispensable, let us put a hand on the conscience… just so “it’s going to be all right” really.”
And unfortunately the fear grows, we don’t know how long this quarantine will last, so many do not know if they will still have the job once it is over. Many do not know how to go on without an income because they have the assets closed. And many have elderly parents and relatives and are afraid to infect them by going to work or shopping. I have read that many who go out for work at home have made themselves a personal island and avoid all contact with family members for fear of transmitting the virus. It really is a dramatic situation for everyone.
