It is a journey into pain and hope, fear and courage, love and a guilt that does not exist, what the journalist-writer Francesco Abate tells.
A journey of reparation within three stories, proposed with the complicity of Marco Noce and Matteo Sau on guitars and Enrico Spanu on laptop and video part, and the associations Prometeo A.I.T.F., A.I.D.O., Associazione Elisa Deiana Onlus. “Three compensations”, as the author defines them, the first is dedicated to Gabriele, born in Rome in 1937, son of Anna, owner of a small fabric shop, and Ciccio, fresh from the ranks of officer, obtained at the Academy of Modena.
The child grows up in Cagliari, where his father is assigned, and once he becomes an adult, he gets married.
Then, three years later, the disease: an ordeal that will last a lifetime.
A life spent going around hospitals all over Italy, in the hope of changing his destiny that, between pain treatments and operations, puts him to the test but does not bend him. He resumes his studies in Law, graduates, becoming a professor at the Ottone Bacaredda Technical Institute for Surveyors in evening classes and, later, a lawyer, a profession that he will practice until his death.
“I was a lucky man,” he will say in the arms of his son Giuseppe, shortly before closing his eyes and moving on. On a screen, testimonies, memories, sensations, questions, of those who have lived attached to a machine scroll by.
The second compensation, Abate dedicates it to his transplanted friends, through a story that speaks of philosophers of medicine, of blame poured on those who get sick, of leaps in time, of Gods like Jupiter, Pluto, Mercury, Venus, of a God who strikes if you do not conform to his divine law, of syphilis, bubonic plague and AIDS («The new scourge of God», as a newspaper headlined at the dawn of the opulent eighties), of the obligations of medicine, including that of never judging, because a judgment, at times, can resonate in the ear like a death sentence. The third compensation is for Salvatore. In Giba, his hometown, they call him “Insulina”. He is the son of a janitor and has inherited his father’s strong character. They fight together against the disease and a sea of difficulties. Until one day, the phone call arrives that can change your life. And while the ambulance escorted by the Carabinieri races toward the transplant center in Cagliari, every family in the village opens the window and lights a candle. Just like it happened in the room, to share a pain that, like love, belongs to everyone.
