Do they know it's Christmas time at all? (In the name of Sandro)
Christmas 1999. I was working, just like today, but somewhere else. It looked like a quiet day, nothing relevant was happening in the world, so I took advantage of the situation to call relatives and friends and wish everybody a merry Christmas. In the meantime, I was keeping an eye on the wires: I had the responsibility for that day's news, so I couldn't get too much distracted.
And a wire, suddenly, catched my eye. It said: "Journalists: Sandro Caporali dead".
Sandro Caporali was the vice-director of the school where I had become a journalist and where I was a tutor in those days. He was my teacher, in many ways. It had taken me some time to learn how wonderful he was, that he was someone to learn from, and that he believed in me. In the end, we had developed something very similar to a friendship, a complicity, even though we never met outside school or events linked to the school. He had ended up calling me his "right hand". There was nothing more flattering for me those days. He was born exactly one day after my mother. And the difference between my relationship with my mother and the one I had with him is just stunning. And please don't be malicious: suffice it to say he was 100 per cent gay.
He had survived to anything, included a skin cancer. He lived for the school, and fought every day against the mafia attitude of his superiours. He had even survived to his own rebellion, getting safe through attempts of firing him all over the years.
I think what he didn't survive to was his mother's death: it had happened just a couple of weeks before he had aneurysm, falling into a coma he never emerged from.
But he fought till the end: it's him who called her sister on the phone as soon as he realised he was going to lose consciousness. And I was sure he would make it again.
But he didn't. He died two weeks later, a few days before turning 57. I simply couldn't believe it. Suddenly my world fell to pieces. The months that followed were one of the darkest periods of my life. I even did things I'm ashamed of, just because I was too weak to stop doing them. And then I payed for all I did, for a very long time. Actually, in some way, I'm still paying fior them.
And I can't even think how it must have been for his sister, losing in a month two close members of her family. The closest ones, probably.
For me, as well as for her, since then Christmas is a mourning day, the day to remember Sandro.
The one who lived and died fighting, who never gave up.
And now I want to remember other people, unlucky people, people who suffer, who die, but never give up, who fall but then get up. People for whom Christmas is not something to celebrate, but a period to stop to mourn. In order to start again and go ahead.
- December 26, 2003: earthquake in Bam, Iran
- December 26, 2004: tsunami in South-Eastern Asia
- December 20, 2006: Piergiorgio Welby wins his battle to stop leaving a meaningless life. I hope you don't get me wrong: it's true, it's the opposite to what happened to Sandro (I didn't want doctors to unplug him, I thought he could come back... and anyway, I would rather have them not do it on Christmas' Eve), but it's a fight. A fight that he won. But it mustn't have been easy for his family and friends. My thought goes to them.
- December 2006: earthquake and floods in Indonesia, same places as 2004 tsunami. Seems they can't have a decent Christmas down there. Some cynical humorist might say that, well, after all they're Muslims, so they don't celebrate Christmas.
- My thought goes also to a friend who is spending her Christmas in a psychiatric clinic, to two ex colleagues who have just discovered having a cancer, and to another friend of mine whose mother has just undergone a surgical operation for the same reason. And to all the people who are suffering, for any reason. I wish them to find the strength to go on, and hope 2007 will bring them luck. If I could do more, believe me, I would.
And if you are not among these people, as a 1984 song said, "Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you".