In Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, Vladimir, one of the two main characters in the existential play, suggests that the voice of the dead makes a noise like wings, like sand, like feathers, like ashes. But each time Estragon, the co-protagonist, replies: “Like leaves.”
Vladimir and Estragon, two homeless men in post-World War II Europe, are haunted by those voices they wish not to hear. All the dead voices are the sound of the leaves rustling. The pains of war, long after the battle, echo in a tree right there. It sprouted leaves the night before. It must be spring.
On May 4, Italy entered the second phase of its coronavirus restrictions as a new government decree replaced the strict lockdown rules that had been in place nationwide for more than seven weeks. Some 4 million people returned to work. And while some liberties are back, including going to a bookstore and exercising outdoors, freedom of movement remains limited. Caution and prudence can save our lives these torrid days.
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On the contrary, the pictures that last week appeared in the newspapers of a fast crowd gathering on the Navigli district of Milan along the canals at the aperitivo hour were “shameful,” said Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala, who delivered an ultimatum to those citizens whose priority in life seems to be evening entertainment. “Either things change right now, or I will have the access points to the canals shut down,” he shouted in anger.
He stressed that the city needs to get back up on its feet. “I support those who go to work and struggle to make ends meet, not those who have fun. I will not allow a few rowdy people without a mask next to each other to question this.”
People are still dying. We are still vulnerable to the virus. Isn’t that clear enough?
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On Saturday, May 9, the overall death toll linked to COVID-19 rose to 30,395.
Too many victims of COVID-19 silently fell away like leaves from the tree of life in a storm that ripped through the country starting from February 21 when we began to navigate a surreal new world.
Too many Italians had somebody in the family whose body was burned to ashes. The spirit that died is not just of the one who passed away but also the sons, daughters, wives, husbands, or grandchildren who remain. The relatives had no armor against the ravages of sudden separation. The survivors have a dying voice within, reaching out somewhere, toiling in the morals of despair.
On the eve of “Phase Two,” a member of the Italian Parliament said that “if the Bergamo dead could talk, they would tell us to reopen the country.”
The deceased, not only the ones in the hardest-hit city of Bergamo, cannot talk. We also cannot put words in a dead man’s mouth. We can only speak to a dead loved one. We can feel their presence like a soothing balm to our agitated spirit that misses them. Too many families are dragged down to the regions of darkness. Some are asking God for strength, that they might achieve.
In March and April, although a priest was still available to bless the body, the absence of funerals was especially hard for the families. “Coping with the lack of funeral was a further traumatic experience,” said psychologist Isabella Cinquegrana. “The funeral is a rite of passage that also allows the family to emotionally close a chapter, to prepare for the farewell and slowly begin reworking the loss. It is much more difficult to grieve alone.”
At the Monumental Cemetery in Bergamo, the burials were performed at the pace of one every a half-hour. Those days, the daily obituary section of the L’Eco di Bergamo newspaper grew from just over one to 10 to 12 pages. The tragic lists not only registered the old and the elderly couples who die just hours apart but also doctors, photographers, salesmen, police officers, entrepreneurs, and blue-collar workers like Diego, a healthy man in his 40s who transported fridges to supermarkets.
To me, each death’s notice was like a short poem in the Spoon River Anthology by American writer Edgar Lee Masters, who told of the injustice done in a small mid-west town with too many deaths.
People died lonely deaths in isolation units and their next of kin grieved alone, a loneliness that is now making the loudest noise.
Some 50,000 relatives of novel coronavirus victims joined a Facebook group called “Noi Denunceremo” (We will report you). The aim is to gather testimonies and raise a voice that shall be heard. The group was started by Luca Fusco, a commercialist in Bergamo whose father died from COVID-19. Last week, it became an association that asks for justice. People share their experiences and family cases. “The aim is not to target health workers, but people in leadership positions who may have underestimated the virus,” says Fusco. “The health workers are victims as much as those who have died,” he says. “But as the healthcare system in Italy is decentralized, it would have been those who lead the regions who set the guidelines for hospitals.”
The Bergamo cluster was first detected in the Hospital of Alzano Lombardo two days after the outbreak’s epicenter in Codogno, south of Milan. Alzano is a village in the Seriana Valley some 6 km from the Upper City of Bergamo.
An official probe has already begun at a hospital in Alzano where the disease spread.
In Italy, too many grandparents succumbed to the novel coronavirus, too many parents, and even too many sons and daughters. Several towns are planning to establish a monument to the victims. The urge to honor the dead and remember this shocking experience is as prevalent as the impulse to try to repress terrible memories and move on.
We owe a memorial to these innocents. To call them all by name is impossible, yet their stories will descend to any age. Each one of them will live in the leaves that tremble.
Mistakes were made everywhere in the world during this collective public health emergency. We all minimized the problem at first. In the beginning, we all underestimated the perniciousness of COVID-19.
Half of all European COVID-19 related deaths have taken place in nursing homes. A report by the London School of Economics finds that in Italy, France, Ireland, Spain, and Belgium between 42 percent and 57 percent of deaths have occurred in skilled nursing homes. Some call it the “silent massacre.”
In Milan, several families have made allegations against Fondazione Don Gnocchi, claiming the nursing home mishandled the epidemic— some 150 of the 600 residents have died since the start of the outbreak.
The alarm claiming alleged wrongdoings was raised by 15 health-workers who fell ill with COVID-19 in mid-March when the Don Gnocchi clinic opened a dedicated COVID-19 ward with beds for confirmed but non-life threatening cases. The move came in response to a call from the Lombardy region asking nursing homes to host COVID-19 patients to ease pressure on hospitals. The health workers claimed they were told not to wear masks to avoid frightening patients. They complained to the management and filed a lawsuit against the clinic that laid them off. The Don Gnocchi clinic has rejected the accusations. But currently, three directors of the facility are under investigation, and also the general director has tested positive for the virus.
Another noted skilled nursing facility in Milan, the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, is facing similar allegations following an investigation by the daily newspaper La Repubblica that found 200 of its residents have died. The relatives of the victims have formed a committee to gather evidence for prosecutors.
The families’ outrage is understandable. They want justice served, yet violations of law must be proven before stating that a crime has been committed. Were those deaths caused by acts of negligence?
Truth is the glue that holds together civilization, and history will be the final judge of what happened during and before this unprecedented state of emergency. But to everything, there is a season. There is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. Some say the latter has come. Some mistakes need to be tracked down. Last March and April were months of incredulity: nobody could predict such a scenario.
As of May 9, 156 medical doctors have died of COVID-19 on the frontlines in Italy. “The dead do not make noise, ‘they are no louder than the growing grass’, wrote the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti”, says Filippo Anelli, president of FNOMCeO, the Italian Medical Association. “Yet, the names of our colleagues reported ‘dead’ and listed on our website make a deafening noise. And so it does the high number of the still infected health-workers —they constitute 10 percent of the total. We can no longer allow doctors, nurses, and paramedics to be sent to fight the virus with bare hands. It is an uneven fight that hurts us, the citizens, and the entire country.”
We are walking the path to recovery together. Individual responsibility must continue to sit at the heart of managing the improved situation at the best if we want to fully re-inhabit the land we love and choose to plow new ground.
“Stop killing the dead/ Outcry no more, do not outcry/ If you would hear them still. If you would not die,” reads that famous Ungaretti’s poem from his book The Pain (Il Dolore). “Their whisper is imperceptible/ They are no louder/Than the growing of the grass, /Happy where man does not pass.”
The shouting we all do, the violence of words, and all the hatred is disrespect for the dead. In a way, it is as if we desecrate their graves or stifle their whisper through the grass that fears the passage of man. For man is capable of doing wrong.
There will be always a bridge called love that connects the land of the living and the land of the dead. Love has the power to overcome divisions, heal wounds, and provide the strength of pursuing social justice. But accepting pain as a condition of existence is the first step towards that justice.
In Waiting for Godot, all the dead voices make noise “like leaves,” says Estragon. Earth puts forth new life in spring. Even our tattered hopes shine a light on a new beginning.
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