As soon as we entered the chapel, my sister immediately noticed that Christ was nailed to the cross\u2026 and for us, especially in that moment of mourning, it was very important to reaffirm that the cross is empty: beneath that symbol lay, as if merely sleeping, the body of our mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even today it's difficult to explain what I felt at that moment, because I missed someone whose personality had been diluted over the years by Alzheimer's and Parkinson's... and, to my confusion, I also felt relief at the rest, hers and ours, after so much time of struggle, suffering and exhaustion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That Monday morning, the first, and until then only, person present in the chapel was Maria, my brother Rog\u00e9rio's mother and my father's wife until his last days: the rest of the family took a while to arrive and, in truth, I was functioning in "autopilot mode" and \u2014 reliving the procedures from the many deaths I witnessed \u2014 I mechanically handled the administrative aspects of that bitter moment, because any awkwardness in the burial process would only worsen the pain of the loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mom had passed away the day before, lying in her own bed in the living room of the house that my sister and I managed to buy precisely to escape the rent that had enslaved us our entire lives and to be able to provide some peace of mind, at least in terms of housing, in her old age: we even tried to call SAMU (the Brazilian emergency medical service) so that there would be some specialized medical assistance at that moment, but despite all my efforts\u2014I went searching for police units from the Adryana neighborhood to the West Shopping mall, in the illusion that a radio call could speed up the ambulance's arrival\u2014that transport never arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But truth be told, I didn't have much hope\u2026 Mom had already given up, surrendered many years ago, and her interest in life wasn't a recent loss. She systematically refused all the activities we proposed: from the beginning she didn't want physiotherapy or painting, but then she didn't even want to make the effort of getting from the bed to the wheelchair anymore\u2026 we suggested sunbathing, but she wouldn't even force herself to go to the bathroom and take her own bath, leaving all this Herculean effort on my sister, little Gesilda, alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I, the son, was unable to cope with the awkwardness of my mother's hygiene routines, but I did my best, for as long as I could, to offer all possible support: my father had not lived with us for ages, my brother<\/strong><\/a> He was murdered in 1991, and, having been emancipated at 16 when I joined the Air Force, I was left as the "breadwinner" since I was 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mom was my dependent, and I took that very seriously throughout her life, but an accident in 2014 brought a setback: during surgery for an open fracture, my right hand initially lost motor function when her radial nerve was pinched, and it took me months to regain movement. But her weight-bearing capacity\u2026 that became so compromised that I can't even carry my children in my arms on my right side, let alone support my mother's weight of over 100 kilos when transferring her from bed to wheelchair!<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Lesson of Pain<\/h3>\n\n\n\n