Looking at the families of the young Italian victims of Crans-Montana it would seem that we can say that sometimes, mysteriously, love makes its way through the folds of the darkest and most deaf pain. The death of a child is the most heartbreaking pain for parents, the test that no mother or father would ever want to go through. Yet, it is striking how several parents have decided to transform the pain of this unspeakable loss into something good.
To honor the memory of their children, to still feel close to them, to not interrupt their dreams, perhaps even to have aa push to move forward: everyone has their own reasons but they all offer extremely significant testimony to how love, guarded and defended even by death, should not be lost.
To remember their beloved sixteen-year-old daughter Chiara, Andrea Costanzo and Giovanna Lanella created the Chiara Costanzo Foundation in Milan: «Chiara was not able to become the woman she would have been, but in this way her dreams will multiply in other children with her same determination in pursuing her own goals and building her own future, also for the benefit of the community».
Thus Casa Sofia, wanted by mother Roberta and father Matteo Prosperi with the Arché Foundation, was born in the Milan area in memory of the young Sofia, who died at just 15 years old. A project that puts the dignity of the person at the center by offering hospitality to up to three mothers and children: a way of transforming pain into an opportunity for rebirth.
Likewise also the parents of Giovanni Tamburithe boy from Bologna who also died at the age of 16 in the fire at the Le Constellation club, are working on the birth of a village for the homeless. An idea born after discovering that Giovanni – like a “modern Frassati” – helped homeless people without the family knowing about it.
To explain the concept of resilience, the image of the oyster and the pearl as a consequence of pain is often used: When an impure or foreign substance, such as a grain of sand, enters the oyster, the nacre cells cover the grain with several layers to protect the oyster, forming the pearl. So the pain that turned the lives of these parents upside down is turning into something unique. The solidarity that arises does not erase the infinite pain for these young lives broken on an evening of celebration. It will not give parents their children back, their peers their friends, or the carefree life of previous days back to life. But with the unstoppable power of good that comes from the heart, it can recall to many, including all of humanity, the sense of a life capable of looking to the future with a look of hope, despite everything.
