“My friend Laura Santi and our last hug”

I got up this morning and I didn’t know where to go or which voice to listen. Today is the first true “day later”. Yesterday and Tuesday, as soon as we wake up, a coffee a shower and a run away from Laura, to her burning room. On Monday, after a sleepless night, I had reached his home in Montebello. I kept her hand while leaving this world. Before, in that first dot also of regrets, there was always one of his vowels on the phone, or I knew that many would arrive during the day. Now there is nothing left to remember my friend Laura. The woman who made her body caged by the disease a symbol of struggle and her death a powerful political act.

The promise of not crying

«Among if they call you to write about me also in other newspapers or someone wanted to interview you on TV broadcasts or wherever it is, don’t be an idiot that you think to take advantage of my memory: go. I will be there with you and I will be happy “. Laura Santi had foreseen, for me a sister, in our infinite chats – preferably in the dark in his room – of the last few weeks. “You will see that Vanity certainly asks you, I recommend, tell me how only you could do, why they were there “. I try Laura, I promised them. I’ll try.

It was impossible to escape his promises, he extorted it (I say it with immense love) to several people. He left homework for his holidays to his restricted circle, so that his memory will remain alive forever. “Keep it and remember me “ He told me and Francesca Mannocchi a moment before entering her room and caring the lethal drug. He wanted us there with her in those last minutes in life, as he wanted to deliver his moral testament to be spread to everyone. He asked us for a huge effort on Monday morning. “If I decide to talk to you, no tears “. No tears, easy to say. Instead, she managed to make the unthinkable also succeeded: two friends, she and I had now become symbiotic at least in communication, because the rest of the time of Laura’s life ate the disease, which greet each other while one of the two goes to die, without tears.

A ferocious evil and a conscious farewell

But not without pain. And not only mine, who selfishly have lost an extraordinary and unparalleled woman I wanted and I will want an unparalleled good. Even his. Laura did not die unconsciously or without fear. In the weeks and days that preceded his most extreme gesture we talked a lot about it. “I’m afraid of being afraid », He told me when the date was not yet so close. “If I take the storage instinct then what do I do?”. He did not want to inflict more suffering if he had given up. I told him many times: “If you don’t feel you you don’t do it, life is yours “. But she always replied: “Yes, but to do what? My illness does not go back, even in the last few weeks and in the last few days it has worsened a lot, you know it ». Now everything had taken: legs, trunk, arms, intestine, bladder. His head was unreachable, but his body was hostage to ferocious evil. With the invasive maneuvers that now left them only a couple of everyday hours of respite.

And that very deep love for life

Nobody can think of going to die without hesitation or hesitation. And she didn’t do it either. But he knew he had to keep his nerves. It is also for this reason that from the Thursday prior to his death Laura has asked to reduce communications only to the essential and operational. “No messages of affection, we love each other, we know. I have to remain concentrated on myself and on my heart, I have to collect me and give the possibility to the fear of entering and living with me as a discreet guest ». Because it is true that Laura Santi now lived what she called “lTo his daily torture for all the days of his life “, But it is also true that she loved that life deeply. In the end, as he also did with the rest, thanks to his disarming lucidity and superior intelligence, he also tames fear. “I’m going to die serene “ He told us on Monday morning. “You say that I won: on the disease, on pain, on slavery ».

Together until the end

I promised you whispering it while I kept your head in my hands in our last hug, a huge gift you granted me despite having said “No greetings between us, it’s as if I were always with me “. It was Monday morning, and before taking a road without return, looking at me with the affection of a older sister, as you always did, you told me: “Come on, come here that I know, you want to tighten me ». With this memory of mine, I’m starting to do it. It’s not easy: The pain for your disappearance is still too totalizing. But the promises are kept. And this is only the first. After all, when I agreed to accompany you to the last, I knew that that immense love was imbued with pain. For the detachment, for the superhuman effort you were asking me. How much you apologized for this. “Forgive me treasure if I hurt you, I would never want to do it,” Repeat me. But you already knew, even before I repeated it every time, that love, the real one, does not fear the evil it can cause.

“I dreamed that I let a blue balloon go”

And in the face of the choice you were about to make, anything else for me has lost the right to be considered a problem. You also told it in the video that we projected to your farewell yesterday. Francesca, who loved you like a sister too and who, going to me, also giving me inextricably in an unparalleled experience, wanted to project him. In those images (recorded a week before your death), extraordinarily intense and heartbreaking, sharp as you say, you said: “The irrelevant things are over, I am getting more and more to the essentials of life, I have reached the climax I have brought it to fulfillment. My life was struck by a drama, the disease has raped my life and I am now proud of me, of what I did ».

A few days ago, when I had breakfast in the morning by listening to your vowel – and you don’t know how happy it is to have hours and hours of recordings in which I will be able to go looking for you every time I miss you – you told me: «I dreamed tonight that I let go of a blue balloon, and do you know that I chose a blue dress for my death? I am sure that everything will be fine my friend ». A few days later, after the first day of reduced communications, it was I who dreamed of you. I told you in one of our latest messages. You hugged me and moved you free, as before the disease took your body. You were beautiful and dressed like the day of your wedding. And you told me “everything will be fine between treasure”. Without you it will go much less well, but you will remain my inspiration. Always.

Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you:

– I Stefano and Multiple Sclerosis: my appeal to Giorgia Meloni

– I Stefano and the multiple chosen, a beauty of beauty

– I Stefano and Multiple Sclerosis: a signature for us and for you

– I Stefano and the multiple sclerosis: the hour of air

–I, Stefano and Multiple Sclerosis: we are also more

-I, Stefano and multiple sclerosis: violated intimacy

-I, Stefano and Multiple Sclerosis: the contagion

-I, Stefano and multiple sclerosis: it was so feeling free …

Photo Courtesy of Guido Harari