Memories of grandparents

The beginning of a love story

I started volunteering because of a pretty girl. Then I discovered that listening was enough: they would be the ones to tell me the stories.

One imagines all sorts of philosophical and moral reasoning driving a person to take up volunteering; in my case, nothing of the kind… I simply wanted to make a small sacrifice for Christmas but did not know what to do, and when I heard that a very pretty girl I knew had started the volunteers’ course, I had my “revelation” about what to do…

When I started I was very young, just turned eighteen and very shy. The volunteer association AVO Concorezzo had only just been founded, and there were no senior volunteers to learn from or to give you tips. On the first day I found myself in the care home without the faintest idea of what to do — completely lost. What was I to say? What was I to talk about? I was not a man of many words.

At a certain point I plucked up courage and went over to a lady, and began to ask her name, where she came from… and I realised that she was waiting for nothing more than for someone to come and ask how she was. And there I had my second revelation: there was no need to talk, but to listen; they would be the ones to tell me their stories.

Again at the start of my time as a volunteer, the head nurse of the day had suggested I take Mrs Iolanda for short walks.

There was no need to talk, but to listen.

Mrs Iolanda suffered from an illness that prevented her from speaking correctly: in practice she would think of one word and say another. At first conversation was not easy, but in the end I found a pattern in her speech — I had finally found a way to understand her. I had grown very attached to her, and spent a lot of time with her. Despite the illness, which I think struck her late in life, she was a highly cultured person and had studied far more than her peers. She had been born by chance in Florence, came originally from the Lecco area but lived a long time in Trieste, and then accompanied her brother around Europe for work.

I wonder what a cultured, polyglot person, used to travelling, must think on finding herself now confined to a care home and struggling even to express simple ideas.

I have no answer to that, but I think that if I were in her place I would start to tell my own story — of when I was young, barely eighteen, and began volunteering because a very pretty girl had signed up for the course…

Collected by Riccardo Beretta · AVO Concorezzo volunteer