La entrada Unos padres atentos se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>Calm, cheerful, and attentive, they strove to make him happy. A married couple who always cultivated the love God gave them and are in the process of beatification.
I asked him how his parents managed to convey that Love: «By cultivating it. Cultivation, culture, worship—all of that means recognizing the gift we have received and responding to it, first by paying attention to understand it, and then by working to offer realities to the One who gave it to us, whatever they may be, always carrying the symbolic weight of love: it always expresses itself symbolically, because being rational, it transcends the analytical level.».
I was curious to know if there was anything that particularly characterized her parents, and I was amazed when her answer once again turned to attentiveness: «My parents» attentive spirit was extremely palpable, to the point that I do remember them resting, as is logical, but I never remember them being inattentive. And then there was their effort to make the most of their gift. Their continuous effort—a smiling and serene endeavor—to help you and make you happy was proverbial.".
La entrada Unos padres atentos se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada El amigo inútil se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>I dropped my daughter off at dance class. An hour later, when I saw him again in the same place, the boy was sitting on the curb with a friend, waiting for the tow truck. I felt, with those vibrations that touch our hearts so authentically when we see certain scenes in life, that they were friends. I realized that this boy had asked his friend for help when he found himself in trouble. I even imagined the conversation on the cell phone: «Hey man, come to such-and-such place, I'm stuck here.». The two had great chemistry, talking, laughing, and joking, making the wait for the tow truck bearable.
The scruffy, long-haired boy was less stressed than before; he wasn't solving the problem alone. How wonderful and important it is to have true friends, even if they are useless friends.
A useless friendship is one in which neither person needs the other, yet they choose to be friends anyway. The most precious friendships are those in which you don't seek anything, but they are there nonetheless. A useful friendship, on the other hand, is one in which you get something out of your friend, for example at work. A useful friend is one who, when you're down and out, you can't call because you think you'll bother them.
We all have useful and useless friends, but we know how to tell them apart. I think we have more useful ones than useless ones. There's a popular saying that goes, "You can count your true friends on one hand," and it's those friends we turn to when we're down and out.
A useless friend is someone we know we won't bother or annoy with our problems. A useless friend doesn't judge us, gives us their time, and makes us feel secure, like we truly are loved.
La entrada El amigo inútil se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada Lo que no te arrebatan se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>We never go out on Fridays for dinner, the five of us, but that night was special. My oldest daughter was turning eighteen. She had said she wanted to celebrate with us, at an oriental restaurant, the same day as her birthday, and the next day with her friends. At about half past seven we left the house, and returned about two hours later. A cake and a bottle of spumante were waiting for us in the refrigerator. I had the glasses ready, it was toast day. When we arrived home, my husband noticed something strange when we entered our bedroom and said out loud: "What is this big mess? A second later, my son said in a surprised tone that the window was open, while I saw some drawers of a piece of furniture in the living room open. It was clear and my body froze all at once.
It had been such a short time since the intruders had been inside the house that we still «felt» their presence and felt fear. Feeling that someone has entered your house without your permission to steal leaves you with a tremendous bad feeling. My little daughter started crying and shaking. I told her that nothing was wrong and she answered me: «It's just that you're not afraid because you're older.».
I was afraid to see what the thieves had taken. They emptied a box where the few valuable jewels I had «slept». That box contained, among the jewelry, an old bag in which there were some gold and coral earrings with a matching ring that my grandmother wore when she went to mass on Saturdays and that she had given me a few months before she died at the end of one summer. I think that was the only thing of value she had in her life and I accepted it knowing that she sensed her end.
Not even the thieves (skilled in distinguishing gold from scrap) suspected that there was a jewel in that old bag inside that box. As I remember, I never took my grandmother's gift out of that rare wrapping.
Life is a mystery in which we learn every day. I notice that everything is a process of detachment. Each piece of jewelry that the thieves took was a memory of a moment in my life. They could steal all my jewelry, but once again, I am convinced that objects are a materialization of a feeling. That night my grandmother did not allow thieves to take her gift. If it hadn't been in the old bag they would have taken them, but sometimes appearances can be deceiving. The gold and coral earrings were worn by her great-granddaughter at the dinner she had with her friends to celebrate her 18th birthday, the day after.
La entrada Lo que no te arrebatan se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada Las vacaciones, tiempo para escuchar se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>In summer we throw away the routine, the one that, during the year we try to fulfill well and also the one that, one gray and cold day made us feel chained. Vacation is to feel an inner peace from where I hear that I don't need to have all the answers.
If I had to keep one idea of what vacations are for me, it would be enriching myself by doing "other things". During the year I do a lot of "cab driving" because I have to take my three children to extracurricular activities, Michele plays soccer, Marina does artistic gymnastics and Monica does modern dance. At the end of the year, I feel a certain relief.
If it were not for the vacations I would go crazy. People need to rest, change their environment, do new things, see other places.
Doing activities without looking at the hands of the clock: reading a new book, rereading another one I have already read, the sea, a friend, an ice cream, an improvised plan, going to a museum or to the movies, playing with my children. Paying attention to what you hear, we all know that hearing is not the same as listening. I can hear without listening. If I take time to listen to others starting with my husband, children and relatives, and also take time to think, I will not have wasted my time.
A good sign that I have lived them intensely is that, in September, I feel like going back to everyday life and my life seems wonderful. I feel that I am very lucky and that I am privileged in life because I have people who love me.
La entrada Las vacaciones, tiempo para escuchar se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada No es casualidad se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>The man told the Indian broadcaster that he could not believe he had emerged alive from the wreckage through an opening in the fuselage.
Ramesh was able to call his relatives to say that he was "fine," but did not know the fate of his brother Ajay, who was traveling with him.
God's choice? A miracle? I don't know what the survivor will think of his life from that day on, but he is aware that there could have been 242 dead.
While others may talk about the law of probabilities, news like this leads me to think that we do not live or die by chance, that life is a gift for which we must give thanks and for which we will be accountable.
I met the man who was to become the man of my life on a flight (Milan-Madrid) one day in July 2003. Sitting next to each other, we started talking in a cordial way when the trays with food were brought to us. Our story began in the heights and we have always been reluctant to think that we met by chance.
La entrada No es casualidad se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada Veinticuatro horas en la vida de una mujer se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>The book begins in a hotel where the guests talk about what has happened that day: a lady, who was staying with them, has just left her husband and has been taken away from him. children to go away with a handsome man who had been walking around for a few days and who had not gone unnoticed. The conversations revolve around the case and everyone, in a state of shock, criticizes the woman's decision, considering that her actions are reprehensible and that nothing good will happen in the future.
Only one gentleman is not hard on her and comments on the decision in an indulgent manner. Mrs. C., sixty-four years old, hearing his opinion without judgment, feels compelled to choose him as her confidant. She is, to all appearances, an elderly, elegant lady with an impeccable reputation.
Mrs. C. has a heavy stone in her heart that she feels the need to throw into the void: she unburdens herself to him, alone, the next day. At that moment, she tells him about an episode, which occurred 20 years earlier in Monte Carlo, of which she deeply regrets and which she has never told anyone. At one point she says that she would like to become a Catholic so that she could go to confession because in a single day she did something that she judges herself of every day.
The novel has many points of reflection, but I'm left with one that has captivated me: the imperative need we have to unburden ourselves to those who do not judge us. That's why, many times, we find ourselves telling our life to a perfect stranger, who doesn't care about us.
As Stefan Zweig, author of this short novel that grabs you from minute one, says: "The world may be cruel but there will always be people willing to help and comfort us".
La entrada Veinticuatro horas en la vida de una mujer se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada El Padre Bob se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>Pope Francis appointed him apostolic administrator of Chiclayo in 2014; in 2015 he acquired the nationality of that country and was appointed residential bishop of Chiclayo. He served as bishop from 2015 to 2023.
He asked to stay in Peru when Pope Francis wanted to take him to Rome. He thought it was not the right time to leave, he felt committed to Peru, but God had other plans... Robert Prevost was appointed Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and also president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, serving until April 2025.
It is not easy to become part of a country being from another. To love the place where you live, to fight to love it. Not to compare. To look for the good and to avoid as much as possible what does not seem good to you... All the Peruvians who knew him saw in him an Augustinian who sought the Love of God and neighbor through fraternal charity. He lived very well the "Do unto all in order to gain all".
He was an American but was never felt to be a stranger. He was an Augustinian, but brought no Augustinian with him. He was a receptive man who transmitted tranquility and confidence. He won the affection of everyone. He was well liked, one could say that he became Peruvian.
He was always just another Peruvian. He never talked about the USA. He had adapted very well to the land, in culture, food and even wanted to learn the expressions and way of speaking of Chiclayo, because he went there to serve. There was only one day when he remembered his homeland: Thanksgiving Day, when he carved the turkey the way his father did.
Leo XIV in his first audience addressed in Spanish his former diocese of ChiclayoHe showed his closeness to the Latin American community. He carried Peru in his heart, where he lived for almost twenty years and was recognized for his closeness to the people: "My dear diocese of Chiclayo, in Peru, where a faithful people have accompanied their bishop, have shared their faith and have given so much so much so much...".
La entrada El Padre Bob se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada La paz que anhela el corazón se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>We live in a cold and indifferent world. Juan José Millás said during the conclave that it was all a staging of these days, very attractive but to mask the emptiness... I think that's how many people think. However, on seeing Robert Prevost's face for the first time, Leo XIVI personally felt that God was giving us a gift that exceeded my expectations. A man who gives peace.
"Peace begins with each one of us: with the way we look at others, listen to others and speak to others" (Leo XIV). Peace is accepting differences, having the ability to listen to and appreciate others. Peace brings unity.
Some of our readers will know the story of María Ignacia García Escobar, who in 1933 after four months of agony (she suffered a real ordeal, sore from head to toe, wasted, the last vertebrae deformed and protruding, her height was decreasing every day) died of tuberculosis in the Hospital del Re (Madrid) at the age of thirty-four.
In some of the notes he made during his illness we read: "Everything in the world is vanity. Only serving and loving Our Lord will last forever". He chose the path of love, living in a continuous springtime.
Almost a century later, the life of this young laywoman from Córdoba teaches us that peace is a gift from God, as she wrote: "I will smile these days in the midst of all the droughts and tribulations you want to send me. I will be able to do everything with you".
La entrada La paz que anhela el corazón se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada Nostalgia (que inspira) se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>Many of these toys were old, obsolete and outdated, but they were a demonstration of the value of play that she had instilled in her children. Children, as we know, love not the one who gives them toys but the one who plays with them.
Who, if they find a stuffed animal forgotten on a park bench or on the sidewalk, does not feel sorry for the child who is feeling its loss at that very moment? And who, if they can, does not put a sign on a lamppost with a picture of the stuffed animal so that the owner will get that beloved one back?
The stuffed animals in the childhood are a tangible form of love and affection, medicine for the soul. They are a constant reminder of special people in our lives. Feeling affection makes us feel good and it manifests itself in gestures, hugs or words. When you feel affection you don't feel judged, nor do you have to pretend or pretend. The cuddly toy understands the child, it does not judge him (that is what the child perceives), on the contrary its look is sweet. After all, that is what we want as children, affection. God gives us affection ("The Lord is affectionate to all his creatures", says the psalm).
I have one memory from my childhood, a very small room where there was little light and a stuffed animal in the shape of a giraffe that was taller than me. My grandmother's brother had a toy store and, once I was there, he gave it to me as a gift. That spontaneous and sincere gift is a thread that forms the warp of my heart.
I have not been given many other stuffed animals -that I remember with that intensity- except for a cloth elephant my mother made for me, which had a black button for an eye. That blue and white striped elephant still sits on a chair in my room in my parents' house in the village. I went back to my childhood again, as an adult, buying stuffed animals again or receiving them as gifts for my children. Having children was a vital energy charge for me. I have given birth three times, all outside my country and quite alone, but that would be the subject of another article.
The first time I went out for a drink with my husband after giving birth in Singapore, I came home with a brown stuffed rabbit with a green bow. The idea was to go out and have a change of scenery (what is now tardeo) but in my head and heart was the baby and I ended up in a toy store where I bought it. We still have him, it's been almost eighteen years. I can't give that rabbit to anyone.
I am reluctant to give or abandon my children's stuffed animals because, around the age of forty-five, I was fully immersed in three childhoods, those of my children. And responsible as I am, I made sure they had a very happy one. To have a beneficial influence on children, you have to share in their joys. Now, coming out of that stage, I realize that I was the one who wanted to recover my childhood. Those stuffed animals are mine, and maybe, as an old lady, without much memory, I can look at them as a new object that will bring me joy. And I could play again.
In my house, each stuffed animal has its name and they are comforting companions, and have been facilitators of emotional development as well as stimulating their creativity and with them we have created a very special bond.
The children are getting older, but the stuffed animals are still there and so is the bond. I think, for example, that Michele will take Kiko with her when she becomes independent. How could I forget or give someone the stuffed duck, whose leg fell off, and a friend of mine fixed it with needle and thread, sewed up the hole, but didn't add a new limb, so that duck is sympathetically missing a leg. Or that other light brown bunny that my mother sewed on the leg that had broken off but inadvertently sewed it on backwards. That's the rabbit with the upside down leg.
I can't fail to mention the white seal and the white and cinnamon dog that a friend gave me for my children, or a beautiful deer, who looks at you with sparkling eyes. In all, no more than eight stuffed animals live in our house, and I can tell the story of each one of them (who gave it to us, and at what time and why) and, as I am sure they have a life of their own at night, they know us, because they watch us attentively and want nothing more than to be caressed and touched.
We get attached to these fabric beings because they are our childhood, they are us becoming children again. To get rid of them would be like getting rid of something that is ourselves, and that is hard. The child we were travels with us, and although it is good that the world expels us from childhood, that is not an obstacle to preserve values that we possess in childhood: purity, the capacity to be amazed, curiosity, imagination or the pure way of looking.
As my children get older, my choice is not to store them but to give them to other children. Just yesterday I gave two bicycles in good condition, a shoebox full of strollers and a car driven by a doll. However, with teddy bears an invisible hand stops me, they are part of me, and they have something of me that I am reluctant to give, they have a special symbolism, as they represent the tenderness and affection that the person who gives them feels for the other. Soft and pleasant to the touch, they transmit a feeling of comfort and security. I wash them frequently, because I want them to smell good.
Children become attached to blankets and stuffed animals because they give them a sense of security, well-being and inner comfort. From a psychological point of view, stuffed animals are transactional objects for children, we use them to express things we would not say otherwise, we rehearse with them for life. They use them to learn to relate to the world. A very special bond is created with the stuffed animal, it is called affection. Over time that feeling turns into nostalgia for a happy time that has passed.
Nurses often use stuffed animals as a health care strategy for hospitalized children, especially to prepare those about to undergo surgery or other painful or unpleasant procedures. Teddy bears motivate children to get better. A child in the hospital who is able to play heralds successful treatment or a return to health. When children play, they can overcome their feelings of being in the hospital, which helps reduce the intensity of negative feelings about their experiences. This allows healthcare workers to cultivate the positive state of mind that young patients need to heal.
Children need nurturing to grow, but it is love that they need the most. When a stuffed animal that has helped you through a tough illness, you can hardly ever get rid of it. And I like to think that neither can the stuffed animal get rid of you.
"At no time is it good to be expelled from childhood and the death of my mother was my expulsion, the first loss of a great love. How many do you have in life? Two? Three? Well, I've already lost one. Milena Tusquets' raw description of loss, of the slaps that life can give you. Childhood, if it has been beautiful, remains as that safe place where we would also like to settle when we grow up. That being very happy without really realizing that you are, without giving it any importance. It is the time when having a stuffed animal gives you encouragement and helps you grow up. There comes a day when you look at that stuffed animal and it no longer speaks to you, not because it has lost its voice but because you have changed.
Sometimes we see a dirty, old, untidy stuffed animal in the hands of a child. In such cases there is perhaps too close a relationship. The child cannot be separated from the stuffed animal because he sees in it everything he has not received. Aloysius was the stuffed toy of Sebastian Flyte, a character in the novel "The Child".Return to Brideshead"by Evelyn Waugh in 1945. An English novel that, when I read it, I was in my twenties and it had a great impact on me. Of all the characters that appear in the novel, it is Sebastian Flyte that captivated me the most. A big brown bear that he can't let go, that strange attachment represents a refusal to grow up. A growing up where Sebastian glimpses all of his shortcomings in dealing with life that he is unable to face. He was a young man who opened himself to life and felt a lot of control and hypocrisy around him.
Sebastian moves in an aristocratic environment, full of material wealth but lacking empathy and love. The bear represents his childhood, that paradise where he has been unaware of the evil that surrounded him. And he discovers a friend, he feels something authentic with Charles. He invites his friend to dinner because his teddy bear refuses to talk to him until he has been forgiven. His friend with these phrases reads in his soul what the teddy bear represents to him.
The nice thing is to grow up, take responsibility and keep childhood in your heart, knowing that this stage has passed. From that place, you look at the teddy bear with affection and nostalgia, which is a positive feeling that helps to strengthen the sense of identity, and more inspired. A friend of a certain age sent me the other day a picture of a rubber doll his mother used to use. I thought to myself... this guy is not stupid, if it helps him to keep that object it will be because nostalgia helps him to live.
La entrada Nostalgia (que inspira) se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada Un Papa pastoral se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>A realistic Pope, concrete, simple, humble and with character. A Pope who is suffering a lot due to his illness and is offering all his pains. The media rushed to talk about conclave, and we already know that he is stable and has been released from the hospital.
He never thought he would be Pope, and he admits, in his autobiography, that his appointment took him by surprise and without being prepared for it (if anyone could be prepared to be Pope).
He had gone to Rome with a light suitcase for the conclave and had to stay there, because the Holy Spirit (who encourages the Church until the end of time) wanted it that way.
Pope Francis has been characterized by being a "different" Pope, who has been breaking the mold by wanting to present himself not as a powerful man of the earth but as a shepherd of the sheep.
The Church is in perennial transformation, and some external aspects change with time. Jesus manifested himself, but the revelation is discovered throughout history and the symbols that represent the sacred change according to the mentality of the time.
Today, a pope must be seen as a messenger of the gospel, not as a mighty man of the earth.
In 1964, Paul VI sold the tiara and donated the proceeds to charity, with that gesture, the people understood that the Pope should not be paragonized with the powerful of the earth. The papacy must not assert itself before the temporal powers.
Pope Francis, throughout his pontificate, has made this idea clear from minute one. Francis sees the Church as a field hospitalIn the middle of a battlefield, where, when you are badly wounded, you have to treat the wounds and not look at the glucose level. That is why he has continually surprised us with his direct and concrete gestures, such as phoning the parish priest of a Catholic church in Gaza.
He is a Pope who has a great devotion to his mother the Virgin Mary. Once he met a family that educated their children with Christian values, but they forgot about Mary because they considered it a thing of the past, and he felt very sorry for them.
One manifestation of his love for Mary is that on the morning of fumata biancaCardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio had gone to pray at Santa Maria la Maggiore, where there is a Byzantine icon: "Salus Populi Romani"which, according to tradition, was painted by St. Luke.
Most Popes are buried under St. Peter's Basilica; but Pope Francis has chosen to follow the example of Pope Leo XIII, who in 1903 was buried of his own free will in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. Also Pius IX, before him, had chosen a Basilica beyond the Tiber, san Lorenzo fuori le mura.
Francis will rest where he has gone to pray hundreds of times for his needs and where he went to pray the morning he was elected. It is, therefore, a sentimental choice.
Community life is essential for him, and for this reason he did not want to live in the Vatican, but in Santa Marta, together with his brothers and sisters in the faith. He is a "rocker" Pope, who likes to be in contact with other people.
The Holy Spirit blows as he wills and when he wills, and if previously we had a theologian Pope, who was happy with his cats and playing the organ in his free time, this Pope was (while health was with him) one of those who kicked in the streets and climbed in the subway to see the faces of the people.
He also wants that simplicity that characterizes him in his funeral and has arranged modifications in his funeral rite: he has simplified the funeral rites. On April 20, 2024, in the new Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis, which has been updated after twenty years. The Pope jokingly commented that the funeral rite needed a modification to simplify it and he himself will be the first to try it out. The novelties are concentrated in four aspects: the language, the main phases of the ceremony, the modification of texts and music of the prayers, the liturgical celebration following the death of the Pope.
Solemn titles will make room for simpler terms such as PastorThe death will take on a more spiritual tone. The confirmation of death will take place in his personal chapel, and the body will be exposed in a single coffin, eliminating the use of three different coffins.
Of all the contributions of this pastoral pope, I would like to highlight his preaching on the family. We all dream of a beautiful, perfect family. But perfection, Francis made it clear, does not exist.
For Francis, the family is something sacred, a place of growth. The Pope advised to call your parents (if you have them). Homosexuals need understanding: "They are children of God and have the right to be in a family. You cannot throw anyone out of the family, nor make life impossible". For the Pope, every family has its problems and its great joys. In a family everyone is different from each other, each person is unique and differences can cause conflicts and painful wounds.
The medicine to heal these wounds is forgiveness, and with God's help we can gain the strength to do it from the heart. God forgives us too, it is we who do not allow God's forgiveness to flood us and heal us. God never tires of forgiving. That forgiveness frees us from resentment and brings peace. Some words pronounced by a Pope that disarm you, but the interesting thing about him is that what disarms is the heart.
The Pope ironizes with his own death. "Someone is praying for the Pontiff to go to Paradise, but the master of the harvest intends to leave me still here," he joked with Meloni when he went to visit him on behalf of the Italian people on the tenth floor of the Gemelli Hospital.
There were flurries of conclave, although the Pope's life is in God's hands. Candles, Masses, prayers: the faithful seemed to be on tenterhooks, with the Pope admitted to the hospital.
Atheists, agnostics and people who profess other religions do not hide a certain shock for a Pontiff who has broken schemes and has reduced distances in a postmodern world.
A Pope who has reached everyone, everyone, everyone (reproducing the "everyone everyone everyone" that the Pope said to the young people in Lisbon).
La entrada Un Papa pastoral se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada Cicely Saunders, en tu cabeza y en tu corazón se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>While doing this work in a London hospital, she met, in 1947, someone who would change the direction of her life as well as the pattern of her thinking. She wrote: "However, I did not know what was expected of me until July 1947, when I met David Tasma, a Jew from Warsaw who was suffering from advanced cancer. After his discharge from the hospital, I followed him in outpatient practice, because I knew that being alone and living on rent, he was likely to have problems. In January 1948 he was admitted to another hospital and for the next two months I was practically his constant and only visitor."
They formed a very close relationship, with a deep and intimate knowledge. Cicely Saunders captured it this way: "We talked about his short forty years of life, about his lost faith and his feeling that he had done nothing for the world to remember him by. We talked many times about a Home that perhaps I could found that would respond to the needs of symptom control and personal recognition at the end of life".
The patient was far from his family and culture, in an anonymous environment, and this fostered a climate of desire and love for the person who was concerned about his "pending" issues to be resolved in his life a few months away from death. They talked and imagined an ideal place very different from the hospital where he was admitted. Their patient felt the need for more symptom control, even though he was not in acute pain, but what he needed most was to clarify himself, to know who he really was before he died.
The deadly disease was separating them at the same time that love was growing. David Tasma, terminally ill, understood, thanks to that love, who he was and who Cicely Saunders could become. He saw all her concerns and compassion for the pain of others that she harbored in her heart and head. A relationship that went beyond caregiver and patient: they fell in love, well aware that their love story was a matter of months.
When Tasma was transferred to another hospital, she continued to visit him daily. Death could not be a problem for them: He in his forties, bedridden, she a little younger, was happy in her profession. The backdrop of this story is the ward of an anonymous hospital. This was not and is not good medical practice - in the sixties of the last century in England it was not even considered good practice for a doctor to talk to a patient. Many friends warned Cicely Saunders that she was overstepping the boundary of what a professional relationship should be.
He was a man who died and left nothing in this world "apparently", because he was a key figure in the "hospice movement" that she envisioned and promoted: the patient needs physical but also social, emotional, psychological and spiritual care. David Tasma left a great legacy to humanity by giving encouragement to what would become the "hospice movement", which would later be named palliative care.
He bequeathed her 500 pounds to found an institution where she could die in better circumstances: "I will be a window in your home". In deep conversations, he would tell her that he would have left her what little money he had to build what they had dreamed of together (at that time it was a castle in the air).
Cicely was told that Tasma told the charge nurse on the floor, "I have made peace with the God of my parents." She died a few days later. Cicely and her boss were the only attendees at her funeral, and they recited the Psalm 91: "With his feathers he will cover you, and under his wings you will be safe."
"It took me 19 years to build the Home around the window," he wrote. David's window is part of the main reception area at St. Christopher's Hospice and is a wonderful heirloom that sends a message around the world. It was founded in London and, those few pounds he gave her, were the first bricks to build the first window. Cicely envisioned this home for the dying as a place where the sick would receive the best possible care. Cicely always saw in that window a symbol: that of a place open to whatever challenges the future might bring, as well as a place where she could care for all who wanted it. It was the first center that exclusively cared for terminally ill patients with palliative care. At the same time, St. Christopher's became a training center and the point from which the "hospice movement" spread.
The challenge of being open, symbolized by the window, and the blending of all the diligence of the mind along with the vulnerability of the heart, were the principles upon which hospice and palliative care were founded, and I believe they still are today.
"I only want what is in your heart and head." This precious phrase that Tasma said to him is the foundation of palliative care: to put on the same scale all the compassion towards the patient that one is capable of at the same time as professionalism based on science and study.
The last months of life can be a fantastic time for the patient and family. Saunders pioneered the transcendent look at the patient with as much professionalism as possible. The essence of medicine is, after all, just that: a suffering person and an incurable disease, but the person is there. The compassion of the heart and the intellect merge to improve the patient's life. Because "you are you until the last day of your life," said Cicely Saunders.
La entrada Cicely Saunders, en tu cabeza y en tu corazón se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>La entrada La fragilidad es nuestra fuerza: una lección de Giovanni Allevi se publicó primero en Omnes.
]]>I happened to run into him on a flight. I had him in front of my seat and I recognized him because his curly black lion's mane was sticking out of the back of his seat (he's a very tall guy). I couldn't resist my curiosity and I don't know how I did it, but I found myself chatting with him. I told him that I admired his talent and listened to his music. At the time, he would have been about 50 years old, but he seemed much younger in dress and dynamism.
The feeling he gave me was that of a normal guy, active, nervous, creative, charming, kind, an artist. Giovanni Allevi was coming back from MadridHe told me he was fascinated by the city, to record for a television program. It did not escape my notice that he was carrying one of those cell phones that were no longer in use (the ones that only serve to call and receive calls). I could not resist asking him the reason for this choice and his answer was beautiful: "I am a musician and I compose, I need inner silence. The electronic sound and the images on the screen distract me from my goal: inspiration. The music. I was shocked, but I understood the answer perfectly. I remember that he communicated with me with words, but also with his soul, I could understand very well what he wanted to say even though he didn't speak much.
When we arrived at Malpensa airport in Milan, everyone went their own way to pick up their bags. I was with my three young children and I was making sure that none of them got lost in the crowd. Suddenly, I saw a tall man with curly black hair approaching me to say goodbye: Allevi. He told me that I had beautiful children, I think he, at that moment, was missing his own. I was shocked, because I thought that celebrities rushed through airports so as not to be recognized by the masses. When, for professional reasons, he was away from his family, he felt a slight sense of guilt, like any good father. He compensated by living intensely the moments he spent with his children and dedicating some of his compositions to them.
Famous people -I also believed before that meeting with the musician- did not say goodbye to people they met casually an hour ago on an airplane trip. I noticed in him a great sensitivity that must be consubstantial to being a composer. I understood that he listens to silence and fills the space with melody.
About two years after this meeting I learned from the media that in the summer of 2022, Giovanni Allevi announced that he was suffering from a tough disease: multiple myeloma. It is an incurable disease and his survival is between 3 and 4 years. The disease he suffers from has a serious prognosis because only 3 percent of patients are still alive after 10 years. He has a cancer that has led him to be admitted to the Milan Tumor Institute to receive the appropriate therapy. The musician recognizes that he is "heroically getting out of hell". This is a very expressive way of communicating what he is going through: multiple myeloma cells are abnormal plasma cells that accumulate in the bone marrow and form tumors in many bones of the body. He must be in a lot of pain: he has trouble maintaining the correct posture while playing the piano and his hands are shaking.
Giovanni Allevi is 55 years old, married to a pianist who is also his manager, Nada Bernardo, and they have two children: Giorgio and Leonardo. Of his private life not much more than this is known. Despite his fame, he has always kept well away from selling his intimacy. As a musician he only offers his gift, music.
Now, tormented, with wounds and nightmares, his hands tremble... and, in his low hours, he also has to give up the greatest thing he has inside: music. When he feels a little better, he offers a concert to his audience. Life has hit him in body and soul, but he is happy when the piano is waiting for him.
She has an instagram account (you can tell she has been advised she should have one) and recently wrote to her followers, "My condition confirms to me that there is a world made of humanity, gentleness, authenticity and courage."
A very special being, to whom life had prepared a hard test that he is bearing with courage. In addition to the gift of music, we now discover his great ability to show pain without fear. Allevi thinks that, as a composer, it is his music that he can offer us. He is aware of having received a gift, a gift: music. The same gift that now gives him hope and encouragement to LIVE. It seems to me that this Italian musician is an example that the gifts received are to serve and relieve others.
Fortunately, in music there are no winners or losers, only the desire to share emotions and experiences. For the pianist, emotion is the language through which we communicate with sincerity, undressing ourselves without fear of showing ourselves fragile and defenseless, because it is in fragility where our strength lies in a world dragged by reason towards extreme competitiveness.
La entrada La fragilidad es nuestra fuerza: una lección de Giovanni Allevi se publicó primero en Omnes.
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