mi little moon-flower

This letter is part of a collection taken form the book “NOI GIOCHEREMO IN ETERNO” (“We will be eternally playing”)  by Lauretta, written to give voice to all those children and young people that are not on earth anymore and to ensure them a future (besides the eternal one, which is for sure) that is earthly too, to give them the chance to “keep on living” and to pay off, not only for the hearts of those who knew them, but also for those who are reading.

That is the way I loved to nickname you, just like Moon-flower you were frail, transparent and delicate, in your body and in your spirit. “And then, you used to say that: Moon-flower is the most beautiful fable in the world”.

You flew to Heaven in the night, light like a butterfly.

Today, early in the morning, I came to greet you for the last time, at the hospital. You were alone, in a small room covered with flowers. When I used to play with you, if ever someone came in to disturb us, you used to send him away, sometimes even unceremoniously, telling: “I want to stay alone with Lauretta!” and you managed to do that until the end. So we got half an hour only for us (meanwhile angels kept your relatives blocked in a traffic jam). You looked so beautiful!

A white long dress, a pink strip with little bows around your head; the pink rosary crown in your hands; a little ring with a butterfly ready to take flight and, next to you, the doll you asked for Christmas, with a pink dress full of butterflies. I cuddled you for a long time, I asked you to transform my soul and make it similar to yours, a little corner of Heaven on earth; then I have said the prayer you taught me, which you often used to interrupt our games with: “Holy Angel, stand by me, give me your hand, I am a baby. If you guide me with your smile, we will go together to the Paradise”. Before leaving I sang you a nursery-rhyme and only when I walked out the polyclinic I broke down and cried.

But was there between us Mariachiara? I want to try and think back to those three intense months we spent together, to fix on the paper the “pearls” you spread on my way. I knew you on August, 11th, Santa Chiara’s day. It was the first day I set foot in the hospital, I was a bit afraid, and you were my first child.

You looked beautiful straightaway, with that thin scar going from one ear to the other which appeared a wonderful circlet to my eyes (you know, I am so fond of circlets!), already captured by you. Thank you, for you have sweetened, relieved my first impact with the hard truth of the hospital. I read you a fable: the butterfly trip (a premonition?) and then we worked a lot, with your young mum, to paint the dough butterflies I brought.

I often thought about how hard a sacrifice it might be for a six-year-old child to always remain in bed, stuck to drip-feeds, so once I asked you:

- Is it so hard to remain in bed all day long Mariachiara?

You were surprised at my question and answered me, brightly:

- I do get up, to have a wee!

Getting up simply meant to move next to the bed. So I understood you learnt to be happy with the few things you had left and I kept this lesson in my heart.

The illness obliged you to manifold restrictions.

When the blood count showed worrying results, I could not enter the room with my whole range of colours, papers, glue, card games. I remember your unbelievably sad stare at the soap bubbles small jar which was on the bedside table and which you could not touch and that “It’s not fair!” that touched the heart. Another time, facing the announcement of the umpteenth x-ray, you cried: “But I’m tired!”.

I saw you smiling a lot, but rarely laughing. And even when you used to smile, your smile was quiet and thoughtful, I would almost say “adult”, if that word could suit you.

However it was a nice, cheerful, ringing, child-like smile, I heard it that day, when, in order to make you eat some dry-cured ham, I let the slice swing in front of your mouth. You tried to grab it, and it got into your ear. That caused a big laugh. For a moment, infancy took everything over.

Each time I used to arrive into the ward, it was a party. As soon as you saw me through the glasses, your whole body used to quiver and you screamed: “Lau-ret-ta!”, opening your mouth wide in your surprise.

I often read you my fables. When you listened to Origami, at the sentence “The flower felt his forces fading away, then he gathered his petals around him and thought about nothing more”, you stopped me and told, staring at me with those serious and reflective eyes that so many times impressed me:

- Origami is me.

I had not the guts to reply (and now I beg your pardon for not having caught your reflection, your deepest thoughts, your fears maybe…but I was so afraid as well). One day you told me:

- Your nicest fables are the ones in which someone dies.

And you were in such a hurry to fly to Heaven that afternoon, when you felt so bad and told me:

- Do you want to know how I feel?

I thought you were talking about your body and I asked you whether you felt too much pain. But your thoughts were higher than mine, because you answered:

- I feel like going to Jesus’s.

everyone at the hospital remembers an expression you used to say very often:

- I want to go to God’s.

The last week, when you could not find a position relieving you, because the cramps gripped your little legs, you had only one word left: “Why? Why?” and that “why” was a weight on my heart, I walked into a church and there, in the silence and the calm of the heart, I found out an answer to your queries: “Mariachiara was kidnapped so that malice (manhood) did not change her feelings. Shortly achieved the perfection, she fulfilled a long career. Her soul was dear to the Lord so He took her quickly away from the earth” (cfr. Sap. 4. 11. 13 – 14). I do not know whether the other children of your own age, that now are deemed to be luckier than you, will go to Heaven, at the end of a long life, with a “booty” as rich as yours. Maybe, if there is one word that you, from Heaven, would like to scream on earth, thinking back to how much you suffered, that is: “It was worthy!”. Yes, it was worthy to be six years old forever, to never know, as a poet says; “that withering, that lip wrinkle and that soil mark on the soul” that feature adult people. But the guardian angel had already whispered the answer to you, as one of the last words you said was:

- Mum, I am beautiful, that is why Jesus will come and pick me up.

Some days ago I found (you made me found) a little paper with the picture of a pink rose, wet with dew; under the rose an inscription: “Bloom and spread the scent of your love. This is your task in life”. Thank you, Moon-flower, for having carried out this task flawlessly. You loved writing the word “love” everywhere: drawings, my folders, every single paper you could get your hands on, and now all that is left of you is LOVE.

P.S. I am sure that in Heaven you have found a little angel that can make good omelettes, almost as good as Lauretta’s.