ALESSIA'S LIFE

 

Alessia’s life…..is incredibly beautiful….. a fable and each day it gets richer in pages of love.

 

In 2003 Alessia was 16. She won a study grant offered by Barilla Co. to the children of their staff. As a matter of fact my wife worked with that Company in Novara.

 

That scholarship enabled Alessia to attend a school year abroad and she chose Ecuador. She loved far-away countries because of their habits and customs, so different from ours.

 

It was a difficult choice....a poor country with a lot of problems, but probably it was just this that made her make up her mind. She left in Sept. 2003, destination Quito.

 

Days and months passed serenely. Alessia used to send mails in which she told about her new life and people she got acquainted to........then she told about the poor children who lived in the street, she told about her visits to the home for female orphans and insisted on poverty and social injustice. She realized that she had to do something for those unlucky children. 

 

In her mails she pointed out what  she would have liked to do to help them

“I just want to study something that enables me to help these countries of the third world, it’s a project I have a mind to do, it’s something concrete, something I really want to realize...I’m not building castles in the air....today I’ve been to an orphanage....since the very moment I got out of there I have felt I was full of love, affection.....but at the same time I’m feeling blue and depressed: They are very small, but surely bigger than me. They do feel love for anything....I’m out of there but my heart is still inside that building.

 

I live in a difficult reality................it’s the poor and sad reality of the country that is stealing more and more bits of my heart.

 

I want to do something in my own small way and I will surely do it.....I’ve a mind to a project I must realize...”

(visit Alessia's mail www.casalessia.net )

 

 

 

On June 10 2004- I was called on the phone and they told me that Alessia had had a problem, she was in hospital in Quito because of an allergy. They couldn’t tell me how serious the illness was so my wife and I set off to Ecuador and we arrive two days later.

 

Alessia is in the intensive care unit. She can’t hear, she can’t see, she can’t speak or move....she had had an anaphylactic shock and she had been in a coma......now she was out of danger......every day there was a little improvement...it was a slow coming back to life.....but she was different.....she told that when she had been in a coma she had seen an intense yellow light....she had felt an incredible sense of well being.......she had seen some long haired people, they were by her and they were praying, she had seen her great-grandmother and she had told her that “the right time” for her hadn’t come yet so she had to come back......then she told things that sounded meaningless at that moment.....she told she had seen her funeral.........but it wasn’t sad at all, nobody was mourning, they were clapping their hands instead....................and she added.............and you mom, you wewe not there...........she spoke of a number of coffins(too many to make sense) but I don’t remember the exact number....

 

Every morning she received Holy Communion. Before she was not used to going to iabout her experience and the title should be “The Light of Ecuador”................

 

Alessia was hit by an anaphilactic shock while in a car with her ‘brother’ from She had become a new Alessia, someone I didn’t know......she was suffering.........yet smiling.................I remember I told her that when back home she should write a book about her experience and the title should be “The Light of Ecuador”................Ecuador. He had tried a mouth-to-mouth breathing and then he drove her to the hospital. They told me that something more is needed to save a person from an anaphylactic shock.

 

On June 28 I was back in Italy to try to organize Alessia’s flying back on an air-ambulance.
The aircraft took off on June 2. An intermediate landing in Panama was planned and from there, during the taking off, there was an accident...............7 people died.

 

The funeral took place on July 10............it wasn’t sad at all and people were clapping their hands while the church bells were chiming.........and her mother was not there.  She had died with Alessia in the air crash. All that gave me strenght and faith.............Alessia’s mails are a moral will I want  and have to honour and fulfill....all that I do is done on Alessia’s behalf.........I don’t know the outcome but she had surely already seen it during her coma.

 

 

 

An association, CASA ALESSIA ONLUS, has been founded with the help of some friends. The aim was to build a house in Ecuador where homeless children could find a shelter and be lodged.

 

About three months ago I met Mr Piola, the owner of a factory in Cusio, and I chanced to tell him about the project and how difficult it was to buy a house in Ecuador. He said that they meant to build a hospital in Burundi.

I told my friends abuot that initiative and we decided to join it giving E: 40.000.

 

As a matter of fact the hospital will be named CASA ALESSIA. Later we also got to know that the hospital would be run by the missionary nuns of the Holy Heart in Novara.

Who was in charge for the initiative also informed us that we could give that money directly to the nuns, if we wanted to.

One of them would be leaving to Burundi in a few days and the money would be used immediately to start building the hospital

 

I personally handed out the cheque on June 22.

 

 

On June 26 I was putting in order some newspaper articles about the initiatives of CASA ALESSIA,when I chanced to open one of Alessia’s folders and I found a letter that ALESSIA had  received. It was dated 2002 and it was from a nun......a coloured nun  from Burundi.....it was then that I remembered: that nun had been in hospital  in Vercelli for some days and she had shared the same room with Alessia.

 

I contacted the nun in whose hands the money had been given and she confirmed that it would be  sister Victoria (Alessia’s companion) who would take the money to Burundi

 

Was it a chance?...........Not for me.............it’s a sign............I don’t know why but Alessia wanted her first house to be built in Burundi.................probably she planned everything from above.........she wanted to give joy to that missionary who had shared that hospital room with her in 2002..............and she also wanted her to be the one who took the the money to start building the hospital.

 

I think that Alessia is arranging something special for Quito........I don’t know when it will happen.but I know for sure it will take place.

 

I think that my daughter’s life is a beautiful story, a fable that keeps on living even up above.

 

DADDY

 

CASA ALESSIA'S PARTNERS.