Like the inseparable birds, when my grandfather passed away, my grandmother began to die. Slowly, day after day, instant by instant. It looked like an unlit candle, with no light.
My grandfather and grandmother, respectively my mother’s father and mother, were one of those old-fashioned couples who perhaps no longer exist. They had gone through wars, they had suffered hunger and misery, they had raised four children with enormous sacrifices. They had them study and even marry them, and they had had us, their beloved grandchildren. Never a fight, but a misunderstanding, never one word more or one less.
Their secret, they told us, was a good night kiss before going to sleep, that kiss that would sweep away every cloud of the day.
When my grandmother was suddenly widowed, her heart was broken, she no longer wanted to live or eat.
We grandchildren, terribly anxious for her, had decided to get her a little dog to keep her company, but we were afraid that she might pass away before the dog. They also knew that it would be the only solution to give her back a glimmer of will to live. She loved caring, caring, and now she didn’t even care about herself.
So, one Sunday, together with my cousins we went to a kennel and with our hearts in our mouths for all those pleading eyes and those wagging things we told the volunteers our story and our needs.
One of the girls immediately told us that she had the right solution for us: his name was Pluto and he was ten years old well brought up.
He took me by the hand affectionately and reassuringly and took me to a box. “He is Pluto, he is an elderly dog, he was delivered to a kennel two years ago because they gave up his property, it could be good for his beloved grandmother”.
In reality, Pluto, in addition to being very sweet and already grateful for a few caresses, was an elderly dog like my grandmother, with a broken heart exactly like her for being abandoned immediately.
He did not need to play, to run, to do who knows what, but he needed a pillow and a big heart that could repair his while he would repair that of those who would take him home with him. Pluto was supposed to take his life-saving pill every morning after his morning meal.
But my grandmother was also supposed to hire hers, so it would be a joint ritual that would further protect their respective old and tried hearts.
We took Pluto home with us. He will never forget his gaze, his slow but fast pace. She understood that he was leaving the kennel. The tears of the volunteers, they did not think that an elderly dog would have a second chance. When we got home, we looked after him, we put a sweater on him because grandma’s house was a bit damp and in the countryside, and we brought him to her. Without anticipating our arrival.
When the grandmother opened the door for us she had a moment of bewilderment, then tears splashed down her face. She knelt to Pluto and understood. We told her her sad story about her and we told her that we don’t know much about him, only that he is a sweet, good, meek, elderly dog and has a fragile heart like hers. She has to take a pill forever every morning and receive so much, so much love that he will take care to reciprocate.
Two solitudes had become an encounter.
* Valeria Randone is a psychologist, specialist in clinical sexology, in Catania and Milan (www.valeriarandone.it) and author of the book “The heart fixer – The words that mend”
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