Giovanna Spantigati

Day after day, I keep on living a difficult life, full of obstacles, but with all my strength. One day Emanuele stopped walking.
He could not stand any longer. It's been a cruel, tragic setback. Botox, casts, splints and later physiotherapy.
Every day, constantly, he does his exercises with courage and hope. Enormous sacrifices in order to move muscles. Every little success seems a miracle. And I am happy and full of hope and almost forget the past.

But ... one day I wake up and realize that next to me there is a ghost that slowly takes possession of my body, my thoughts, my soul. And my eyes can no longer see what surrounds me, and everything hurts.
I do not listen through my ears, I do not touch with my hands, I cannot breathe with my body. Everything suddenly becomes unfamiliar.

At first I do not understand it, it's a sneaky ghost, and I realize what's happening just when my eyes are full of tears, when everything I believe in, and hold onto every day, has suddenly exploded in front of me and the skyscraper that every day I struggle to raise high in the sky crumbles before my cold, motionless, helpless body. You coward phantom do not have the courage to ring my bell; you just show up at my door and, like a deadly whisper come into my body. Only a loud scream distorting my face, my body and my heart can send you away. But then, sitting on my bed, exhausted, defeated, my cheeks burning with tears, my heart hurting, I decide to listen to you: you are the pain. And if you have come here with all your anger it is because you are desperate, because you want to be heard, you just want to be accepted.

I close my eyes and I begin listening with humility. You too have the right to exist. As a mother wounded by her child, I wipe my tears, I smile at you, I let you vent. And I cradle you with a lullaby to let you find your peacefulness and you fall asleep like an angel As a mother who accepts and loves each one of her children, I also accept you because you too are part of me.


Giovanna Spantigati