When my mother died, all the messages I received were: ‘you will get over this,’ ‘time heals all wounds,’ ‘one day you’ll recover from all this, you’ll see,’ etc. And although they were meant to be comforting messages, they discouraged me: the arduous task of overcoming all that pain seemed impossible to me…

Until one day my paternal grandmother said something that marked me: ‘You will never get over this.’

And finally, those harsh words, which didn’t sugarcoat the situation at all, helped me: it wasn’t necessary to try to achieve an impossible goal, it was only important to understand that this wound would stay with me permanently.

It wouldn’t always be the same; at the beginning, it was an open, bleeding, and shocking cut, surrounded by urgency, nervousness, and attention to this gushing hemorrhage. Little by little, the blood turns into a scab and everyone calms down, but inside it still hurts a lot. Any clumsy bump can reopen the memory and make it bleed. But over time, the scab falls off, giving way to new skin, a scar that bothers you every time you move. And in the long run, a very long time, the red mark assimilates more to the original color of the skin.

But it never disappears, the scar is forever.

And on rainy days it sometimes hurts.