To die of love is not an expression for romance novels, or perhaps romance novels can mirror reality more faithfully than cultured literature. Certainly is dead d’amore, Fabio Pareti56-year-old architect, struck down by a sudden illness on June 21, immediately after attending the ceremony of cremation of his wife, Margherita “Margie” Iannilli, 46 years old, suffering from a serious illness for some time. The couple lived in Porto Santo Stefano with his ten-year-old daughter, a small family well known in the municipality of Monte Argentario. Margherita Iannilli was a representative of a food company, and in her youth she had practiced judo. In a photo released by the newspapers, Margie appears smiling, even if tried.
SOCIAL REMEMBER – She is embraced by her husband, who two days after the death of his beloved had written on their Facebook profile: «This profile will not be closed or change its name, but rather it will be even more active, always in the memory of Margie. Logically who will write will be only Fabio now. Fabio who has always been not very social, but thanks to her he has also changed a bit. Some will think that those who die don’t read Facebook (and they’re right). For others it may seem heavy and distressing. The most intelligent will understand, perhaps even not sharing.
Honestly, I don’t care much, I’m going on my way, indeed his “.
His path – the path of Margie, who died on Friday 17 June – was the choice of cremation, which Fabio obviously attended. All the friends and acquaintances of the couple were horrified at the news that, after her death, only four days later, returning home from the cremation ceremony, he fell ill and died within hours. On their Facebook profile there is a succession of incredulous exclamations – and a feeling of disbelief also expressed by the mayor of Monte Argentario, Franco Borghini -, of manifestations of pain that cannot find the right words to express itself. Because, even those unfamiliar with the couple, learning of such news are entangled in a contradiction: death is always a fatal and hateful event, especially if you leave a ten-year-old girl behind, but how can you not give in to the temptation to to find a meaning – the death of love, in fact – in the fate of these spouses, who saw their peaceful family first attacked by the disease, and then did not stand up to the separation imposed by fate?
EYE DOES NOT SEE … – Because, even if it is difficult to venture hypotheses, it is natural to think that he, Fabio, who was responsible for keeping the memory of his Margie alive, and even becoming, in his name, a little more open to social communication, and that therefore he had imagined that he could still, in his own way, embrace her as he did in the photograph, he did not stand up to that cremation in which, all too crudely, a loved body becomes ashes. It must have been too violent an impact with reality, such as to have shattered all the enamored illusion that something about Margie, if only the memory of her shared with her friends, could remain in this world. The fire must have brutally devoured this escape route we seek when we are deprived of a very dear person. Grieving is a surprisingly powerful process, but it takes time.
With hindsight – which in these circumstances, unfortunately, is completely useless – it could be said that it would have been better for the husband not to attend the cremation of his wife, not to inflict on himself that last moment of sharing that confronted him with the definitive destruction, at least on the material level (but we do not know if he believed in anything beyond matter) of the one he loved. Sometimes, faced with loss, mourning, we need to take a step back, not look into the depths of the abyss. Not all hearts make it; indeed, the most sensitive are precisely those who are also most vulnerable. So it was for Margie Iannilli and Fabio Pareti. Two people to whom love gave strength, and the tangible presence of the other. When the latter failed, when she was irrevocably denied, their fate was tragically reunited.
