Is dead Omar Turatia musician from Assago who had lived with her for over twenty years amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The disease, diagnosed in 2003, had progressively immobilized him over the years, forcing him to live connected to a ventilator.
Despite the condition, Turati continued to write and compose music thanks to technological tools that allowed him to communicate with the movement of his eyes. For him the acronym ALS had also taken on a symbolic meaning: “Only free the soul”an expression that summed it up his human and spiritual journey.
Here we propose an interview with Omar Turati carried out by Rosanna Biffi for Christian family:
He wants to publish the songs that sing his intense dialogue with God. And, thanks to the proceeds, help those who suffer like him. Omar’s blue eyes smile immediately, curious and friendly. He would have a thousand reasons to hate the world and how many breathe effortlessly, like this, without thinking about it. Instead his head and his heart are free, open to life and love, capable of getting the better of a sorely tried body.
Omar Turati’s life ran smoothly until 2003: classical guitar and sociology studies, music teaching, travel, friends. Until a terrible diagnosis arrived in July of that year: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, a neurodegenerative disease that leads to progressive paralysis.
«Right away the acronym ALS took on a new meaning for me: “only frees the soul”», he explains in his room in Assago, just outside Milan. Since July 2007 Omar has been confined to bed or in a wheelchair, after the tracheotomy which has since tied him to a respirator, day and night. «From that moment», he says, «my life completely changed, the price I had to pay to continue living was my dependence on machines».
Omar’s room is the center of the Turati home. Father Benito and mother Giovanna come and go, he with a calm and good-natured silence, she chatting and encouraging, like the true force of nature that she is. In a poem that the son wrote for their 40 years of marriage, there is a significant, very true verse: «In our house there is never indifference, but a lot of noise is its essence».
With friends who continually arrive, with reproaches and gestures of affection from an ordinary family. «Love is the main thing that gives me strength, because the quality of life depends on the quality of love»adds Omar. «I am loved because I still know how to love. There are many people who manage to appreciate me and love me, regardless of my illnessto. For me, meetings with those who don’t make me feel sick are a miracle of love.”
The point of balance between Omar Turati and ALS is a tiring and continuous conquest. Speaking costs him effort, writing with a dedicated computer is possible for him by moving his head to control the mouse. «One of the most difficult phases in dealing with a devastating disease like this is that of acceptance»he confides. «It is a long and painful process. The most important operation is to try to make sense of suffering and illness. Otherwise the path to desperation opens up.”
Omar found meaning in something he didn’t have before: faith. «In me, acceptance is going hand in hand with the continuous search for a dialogue with God, in illness. I’m not alone. I am convinced that there is Someone up there who, in his own way, protects me or who tries to make this part of my life as painless as possible.”
This year, Omar dedicated a song written and set to music by him to that Someone he met on his cross: I would like to speak with God. But does he speak to us with God? «Yes, especially at night». The night, when every soul is alone. And his song that emerged from the nocturnal dialogues is really beautiful. It is in the pop version, arranged by the maestro and producer Filippo Bentivoglio and accompanied by the Shekinah choir of the Youth Ministry of the Archdiocese of Milan. But it is equally so in Omar’s original version, more melodic, sung by his friend Andrea Bellani and performed by a small band formed for the occasion, Gli amici de “Il ramo”, where “ramo” is Omar’s name written backwards.
«The phrase in the refrain “He only left my soul free” has two meanings»explains Omar. «On the one hand it is the declaration of an objective limit; on the other, inserted in a joyful context of love for life and awareness of the preciousness of one’s existence, it becomes a hymn to love, to hope”.
The plan is to publish and sell the CD, to convey to those who are sick (but also to those who are not) an extraordinary testimony of lifeand to donate the proceeds to three associations close to those suffering from ALS: the Italian Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association, the Stefano Borgonovo Foundation and the Aldo Perini Association.
Omar is particularly fond of Stefano Borgonovo, the former AC Milan and Fiorentina champion who also suffered from ALS.after having spent a period of hospitalization near him at the Niguarda hospital in Milan.
«Then he was closed and angry with life. But when a sophisticated tool arrived that allowed him to express himself again, it was as if he had rediscovered the meaning of life. I saw it flourish again.”
Borgonovo has already decided to support the CD project. As did Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, whom Omar was able to meet at the end of September, a year after meeting the current Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi. Since then, the young man has maintained a correspondence with both of them. An exchange of letters between free souls.
