Memories of grandparents
1
A new beginning
AVO Concorezzo merges into AVO Monza. Not an end, but — amid Masses, prayers and Mr Angelo — a new beginning.
At the end of the year we are about to dissolve the AVO Concorezzo association. The bureaucratic obligations have grown ever heavier over time, and Covid did the rest. The number of volunteers has fallen by 75%, leaving about ten of us. Is this the end of our association? I think NOT!!
In July we returned to the care home after nearly a year and a half away. It is not as it was before Covid, and perhaps it never will be again, but the gate has opened.
The AVO Concorezzo association will merge into AVO Monza, and this will allow us to continue our work. Is this something new?
In truth no: at the start of this adventure, more than twenty years ago, we began precisely with AVO Monza, at the suggestion of Professor Iamartino. Personally I do not see it as the end, but as a new beginning — and to all intents and purposes it is!
The world has changed completely, and life in the care home too has been utterly turned upside down. All the settled habits we had have been overturned. Not even in my most fanciful dream would I have imagined that, used to moving freely among the wings of Villa Teruzzi, I would today find myself confined to the entrance hall alone, in a disposable gown, overshoes, cap and FFP2 mask…
In any case, I like to think that as long as a single volunteer serves at Villa Teruzzi, AVO Concorezzo will not die.
Because AVO Concorezzo is not just a charter, important though that surely is, but much more. AVO Concorezzo is the memories we carry with us, the lessons of our grandparents, the tears wiped away, the hands caressed, the stories listened to: all of this is AVO Concorezzo, and on the first of January 2022 these things will not disappear.
A special and well-deserved thank you goes to Elio: without him none of this would ever have begun. He did an enormous and largely invisible job in the bureaucratic and administrative running of the association. It is easy for us to receive the compliments of our grandparents, but all of this was possible because Elio made it possible!! Long live AVO Concorezzo!!!
A new beginning
2
To be continued…
It is 2024. The last time I wrote, I had only just gone back to volunteering at the care home. Today the restrictions have, very slowly, eased. Owing to the shortage of volunteers and for personal reasons, I have moved my shift from Saturday to Friday afternoon, amid no small work difficulties. This change has led me to reinvent my by-now settled volunteer “routine”. Now, as soon as I arrive, I help to prepare the Mass. Often, though, my help is superfluous, since many times I arrive late. So, during the Mass, I go over to Anna Maria, a former volunteer who has now been a resident at Villa Teruzzi for some time (I wrote the story “Sometimes we laugh” about her). In the past you could still talk with her, perhaps get her to sing or walk; after Covid, instead, she is always in a wheelchair with her eyes closed. She is not asleep — she simply keeps her eyes closed, as if she lived in a world all her own that she has built. Sometimes she moves her hands, puts a finger in her mouth like a little girl and says a few confused words. Even when she opens her eyes they seem to me empty, without expression, almost without a soul. During the Mass I lean to her ear and say the Our Father or the Hail Mary with her. With this small gesture I feel I rouse her from her torpor. Once I seemed to understand, from her mumbling, that this prayer made her heart lighter. It is hard to say whether this is my own wishful thinking or the truth, but she was always a great believer, and perhaps these words of the Our Father, repeated for so long, awaken something in her.
As long as a single volunteer serves at Villa Teruzzi, AVO Concorezzo will not die.
When Mass is over I chat with the residents, but I always have a fixed appointment with Mr Angelo. This has always been a feature of my volunteering: the one-to-one relationship with a single person has always let me enter more deeply into the soul of the resident.
Angelo is an extremely cultured man, an entrepreneur from Concorezzo. In his company he made clichés — the printing plates used for the packaging of cosmetic products. Thanks to his work he travelled a great deal for the time: the United States, Canada, Cuba, South Africa and who knows what other places.
Illness sadly confined him to a wheelchair and left him almost completely blind, but perfectly lucid. Being an extremely curious man, I began to read him the newspaper and to comment on the news of the world. In a certain sense he and I are very much alike, both insatiable for information of every kind. From a simple reading of the paper, our meetings turned into discussions of geopolitics, history, science and sport. Often Angelo prepares questions that he keeps in mind during the week and then puts to me at our Friday meeting (once he asked me to explain the nuclear fusion of the sun). I must admit he has truly taught me a great deal and has let me explore subjects I would never have thought of.
With Angelo I see the path of my own life: twenty-four years ago I began volunteering by listening to and comforting the elderly who opened up to me; now, the shyness of my youth set aside, I tell stories, I talk and often even draw out some laughter. A journey of volunteering, but also of life. I do not know whether I have grown better over these years, but my way of volunteering simply reflects who I am today, and I am certain that this whole journey with my grandparents has not been in vain.
Collected by Riccardo Beretta · AVO Concorezzo volunteer