Paolo Mendico, who suicide at 14 years after being a bullied
The eyes are dry. They do not pour tears. As if the abyss of the pain that swallowed her had dried up to the last drop. Simonetta, the mother of Paolo Mendico, The 14 -year -old boy, victim of bullying, who in recent days has committed suicide in his room in the municipality of Santi Cosma and Damiano in the province of Latina, In an interview with the program Unknown On La7 he says it with a resignation that adds pain to pain: «To his funeral (last Sunday, editor’s note) There was no one. There was only one boy with whom he was very agreed, because he was educated just like him. When my son was absent out of illness, the only one who gave him his homework. But still there was no one at the funeral, not even the parents, none».
He repeats that word three times: none. The tone is not accusatory but resigned. As if the malice of which Paolo, from the fifth grade to the first year of superiors, had been made object in life – with repeated bullying: broken pencils, scribbled notebooks, death threats and insults like “Feminiuccia”, “Nino D’Angelo” and “Paoletta” on which the judiciary is now investigating – he had not stopped even after his death.
As if the funeral, the last farewell, the supreme act of pietas In which you pray for the dead and try to console those who stay, it was not – for those parents, their children, the manager and teachers of the school of Paolo – the last chance to tell that boy, his parents, his family: “We were wrong, we were stupid, bad, insensitive, cowards, distracted but now we try to remedy, even if it is too late. We bring a flower, let’s say a silent prayer, to ask you for forgiveness and to tell you that your death, perhaps, will not be in vain if after this story we will have understood ».
And to say to those heartbroken parents who are not alone. Hypocrisy, someone could object. No, rather, pietasextreme attempt of reconciliation, courage to break the hatred chain Which always calls other hatred and refreshes violence.
And instead there was no one. The funeral of a person is not a bureaucratic rite, a formal passage, the handling of a practice but the time to pray – believers or anything that you are – for those who have gone and embrace who is left. This applies, even more so, for a victim of violence and bullying, as it is in this case. Not surprisingly, in the South, until a few years ago the funeral was called, with an ancient wisdom that we have lost today, “accompaniment”.
If Paolo’s mother stressed several times that there was no one at the funeral of her son, it is because, perhapshe expected that embrace, was also from some bully who had targeted his son and his parents, that accompaniment, That presence that, even changes, even embarrassed, as it could have been in this case, soothes, caresses, comforts, makes you feel less alone.
Nobody, however, was the last act of bullying that Paolo pierced. As if the loneliness and isolation of which it had been victims in life could not be broken even by dead.
“I asked his mother if Paolo had some friends to confide with,” he said Don Fabio Gallozzi, The parish priest of the country that celebrated the funeral, “because I knew it was going to play the battery and the bass in an association, the Black Light Project. And whoever plays the battery, I said to me, must necessarily play in a group. But the mother told me that she played alone, sometimes with her dad ».
Only until the last, Paolo. In life and in death.
“We apologize for not understanding,” Don Fabio in homily said. A request that calls everyone into question.
