All Things in Their Place

by Giulia Dell'uomo

  On this terrace in front of the Colosseum I got back my sunrises and sunsets. I put away the nights spent crying and the awakenings with puffy eyes and sense of emptiness that not even a rich breakfast, with a cream pastry that I love could fill. Like an eraser I wipe away the pain. Maybe the stain will stay inside me, like when a window steams up and the marks are visible, made with a finger some time ago. Doesn’t matter though, because everything I have endured to now has made me the person I am today, a better person, probably. I look at him and he looks at me. I smile spontaneously, something I never used to do, precious, rare, unique and priceless in my life. There is no more room for tears. Alex pays the bill, takes my hand and we leave the bar. He squeezes it tight, so as to leave no room for doubt. ‘If you like we can meet again tomorrow’. I look at him and smile again, by way of answering yes. ‘Ok so until tomorrow, Sara’. ‘See you tomorrow’ I reply. I head home and not just my lips but my eyes too are laughing. Everything is now in its place.

  Epilogue

  More than 1000 days have passed. I was admitted to hospital many other times. I endured many more cycles of radiotherapy. Isolated from the world. I watched seasons pass behind a window. I met people who aren’t around anymore, others still who got better, who won. All of them are in my heart. They each taught me to love myself more and value the right things. I fought for three years, three long years. I grew and changed. I cried, I fought, got joy from small progress against the disease. Slow and imperceptible steps, entering and leaving the hospital many times. While the rest of the world continued its life I was suspended each day from when Mum put that heart-shaped chocolate in my hand. With each admission I had improvements. Occasionally I was close to the end. Not the end of life, the end of a chapter of my life, the most important one. The one that made who I am today. Until the end came. I walked into the hospital, knowing the way off by heart. Check-up scan. ‘Sara it’s your turn, get ready’. The doctor that greets me, peeks around the corner. He calls me by name because by now he knows me. Maybe because of my age. I take off my jewellery, get undressed and get into the machine. Forty minutes of scanning, lying down while the machinery scrutinises me from head to toe. It’s looking for bad cells. It’s looking for the enemy. Two doctors guide it from behind a window in the same room. Routinely the machine slows and concentrates on the neck. It goes back up and behind the trolley where I am lying. I breathe again.

  ‘Sara we’ve finished’. The doctor with glasses shows me the door. ‘Wait for me in the waiting room’.

  I go to the room where many times I have waited. Where I wished the illness would end. I sit down amongst many patients, some old, some young. Old people in wheelchairs, desperate wives, tired husbands. On the radio a song begins. My song. Our song.

  While you sleep I protect you and touch you with my fingers I breathe you and hold you to have you forever, past this moment. I get to the bottom of your eyes, when you hug me and smile. If you hold me tight until you swap souls with me, this moonless night flies...between confetti in the sky and handfuls of sea spray..now it flies...you are certainty in my days, excitement. In the dream of all the silences that scream life you are the song that frees joy, you are refuge, passion...

  He’s here. Even today. I always knew. Roberto. He who continued with his life, but in our refuge of the hospital, continued to exist only for me. Each radiotherapy with the snow or the summer sun, stayed under my window. I looked down at him, I saw him and each time I looked out, over these three years, I found him. He loved me in his way, he guaranteed his presence during difficult times. He never let go of my hand during the illness, but he took it each day. Even though he lived two separate, divided lives made the illness our meeting point. Like saying ‘hold on to me and if you fall I’ll catch you’. He who a few days ago, three years since my diagnosis became a professional surgeon and sent me the last text of our relationship.

  Sara of the tenth floor... when one hundred times I travel that floor I look in the first room. It’s where I discovered a treasure I will be tied to for life. Life plays tricks, but you give me strength to hold out even though you aren’t there, yet you are there like an unshakeable faith. Love takes away freedom but it deserves to be lived by all, even you and I. Suspended and above we exist. You just have to believe and believing what you can’t see is the basis of the strongest ties. That’s why I’m writing to you. I performed my first operation as a surgeon. I finally made it. I operated on a 70 year old patient. A sick man. I operated on his stomach. And do you know what? Heart, stomach and mind, remember? In that stomach I looked for your name, my mind was reminding me each step. I found it in the most obvious place. Where I left it. Where it will always be. Where it will always be jealously guarded and no one can erase it. My heart. This goal I dedicate to you, moon slice with legs.

  ‘Sara?’ the doctor with glasses has returned. He holds my truth in his hands. I follow him and sit down in a room dimly lit. He places the report on the table. I am anxious. The few seconds I wait feel an eternity. Behind the desk there are three of them. They read my file. In front of the desk I sit and then mum and dad join me. My guardian angels on this journey, silent and discrete in pain and in joy. For a moment I think about those three years, how the first time in this hospital I sat before a doctor. How small and vulnerable I was. How afraid. How many things would happen and I had no idea.

  The blonde, curly haired female doctor brings me back to the present. She looks at me as she would an adult. Today I am one. I am almost 25 years old. Amongst my friends it’s called the first quarter century.

  ‘Ok Sara, this time we’re there. The scan was clear’. No mincing of words, she goes straight to the point.

  ‘What does that mean doctor? Is my daughter healed?’ interrupts mum with bright eyes. After three years she needs to hear the words.

  ‘Yes, there is no trace of the tumour’.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The most important word to write is thank you. I once read a book by Rhonda Byrne that said ‘Say the magic word Thank you. Say it aloud, scream it from the rooftops, whisper it to yourself, hear it in your head and feel it in your heart: the important thing is from today on, you always take it with you’.

  Therefore....

  Thanks to those who don’t judge without knowing, who don’t look down at others’ lives without walking in their shoes. Thanks to the moments, acquaintances, coffee time, a photo together, a hand shook and then let go, a quick lunch between a bite to eat and a story.

  Thanks to friendship, the real ones, that when you need it most, more than ever, exists and is stronger. And manifests itself in each little gesture and behaviour daily. In a hot meal made quickly, if the phone rings to say ‘I’m coming over because I need you’. In a song heard together, sung until you lost your voice, finding and losing all your energy at the same time. In the tears dried at night and the smile gifted in the morning. In the understanding without judgment, in the advice without dual purpose, in sincerity without cruelty. In listening and in talking. In a car trip without a destination, because the best destinations are discovered by chance. In sincere laughs, the ones that make your stomach hurt. Those unexpected laughs, for no reason. Thanks to the constant friendships, that challenge time and space. That resist the wrinkles of different lives, sometimes distant, but never parallel. Because the meeting point is always found.

  Thanks to the family, unique, precious and irreplaceable reality. And of saving, refuge, the lighthouse in the sea. Pureness of good and serenity of spirit.

  Thanks to those that teach you the courage to try, to those who give you shivers up your spine and make you live. On impulse, on instinct, with heart. To those who believe that sometimes the reason is not everything and we can be happy today, without thinking about tomorrow, and forgetting about yesterday. To the people who are beautiful to breathe, to those that give you strength to attack life and to hold onto it by tooth and nail. Thanks to the surprises, to life outside the box, to the calculated mistake ,
to the idea gone up in smoke and the one made stronger and better, more real.

  Thanks to those who make promises and keep them. One day someone said to me that the sun would come out again. To that person I want to say that they were right.

  Thanks to love, in all its forms, because it is an unending font of energy. It is dynamic, vital, passionate and drives every day.

  Thanks to the objectives met and the destinations set. To the hard-fought satisfactions gained with your own strength.

  Thanks to those who know how to see the light even when it’s dark, to those who find the courage when they are scared. To those who give determination and tenacity. Thanks to those who roll up their sleeves and never let them roll back down again. To those who face life head on. To those that reinvent themselves, and surprise themselves and find they are better than they thought they were.

  Thanks to those who were, but aren’t any more. Thanks to those who aren’t but will be. Thanks to those who were and always have been there. Particular thanks to Morena and Lorenzo, Marco, Federica, Filippo, Lorenzo B., Bianca, Elena, Valentina, Luca, Vito, Concetta, Stefano, Silvia, Marco B., Michela M., Marilena.

  Thanks to those who each time feel the earth move, have the strength and ability to put everything back together, to fix the broken pieces, and say ‘I can’t do it’ knowing that they have to. And so they fight, grit their teeth and fight. And one day will say with pride that all things are back in their place.

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