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"...because death is only the beginning of another beautiful life. The problem is that we still don't know what it is, and the things we don't know scare us a lot."
Alice S. (5th grade)
Sometimes we come across something unexpected and beyond our "reach" that shakes us and forcefully enters our thoughts, often creating emotional short circuits that are hard to forget.
This happened to me with this book "The Book of Alice" (Rizzoli) written by Alice Sturiale, a girl paralyzed in her lower limbs and affected by a serious degenerative disease. A disease that did prevent her from walking but not from experiencing her affections and emotions with intensity and joy.
In play, at school, with friends, among the scouts... this 12-year-old girl exudes a carefreeness and a "freedom of thought" truly enviable, writing a sort of fantastic diary full of poems, stories, thoughts, and reflections far too deep for a girl her age. Thoughts and words aimed at the beauty of things and the strength of spirit that drives her, at 9 years old, to write: "My eyes are blue because ever since I was little, they have devoured all the sky."
A book that's sometimes funny, supported by a veil of latent and ever-present melancholy. Alice, in fact, left us in February 1998 at the age of 12, and with this book, she left us a beautiful testament of "what it means to know how to live." In defiance of all "of us," adults and vaccinated, who always complain about thousands of things that most of the time turn out to be nonsense.
PS: I dedicate this book to Jamina. A girl a few years younger than me with whom I've been chatting for a while, who has a major health problem that has kept her "almost immobile surviving" for years, perpetually on the edge between life and death. A big hug to you :-)
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