FROM A distance, it could have been mistaken for the village flower show. Many people wandered up and down, appearing to examine the floral exhibits. But all the flowers were sitting on coffins, 207 of them; 207 of the 289 people who were killed by last Monday’s devastating earthquake in and around the Abruzzo town of L’Aquila.
The mighty and the powerful – Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone – were among those who paid tribute to the earthquake victims during a moving state funeral in the courtyard of a police barracks just outside L’Aquila yesterday. This, however, was not a day for them, not a day for the cast of shakers and makers.
This was a day to remember three-year-old Moldavian Marina Grec, crushed to death by the quake and with both her parents now seriously ill in hospital. There was only one family friend, a Moldavian neighbour, to stand by Marina’s small, white coffin yesterday. “We are such good friends, we spent so much time together. This was the least I could do,” said the friend.
Close by among the four rows of coffins, stood another white coffin. This was Ludovica Centi, born just last September. The official who was in charge of organising the endless succession of hearses to carry away the coffins came to little Ludovica.
“Is she on her own? Does she not have parents with her, too?” Ludovica died with her parents, Antonio and Maria.
For most people, it was a day marked by a quiet dignity. People stood in the huge courtyard, remembering the dead and wondering when this nightmare would end, reflecting on the fact
that since last Monday there had been more than 800 aftershocks.
Some people kissed the coffins and crossed themselves. Others were more demonstrative. A young woman lay across the coffin of 49-year-old Luca Di Cesare, her father. Utterly distraught, she hugged the coffin, oblivious to the 2,500 people around her in the chaotic courtyard. “Papa, oh Papa.”
Earlier, prior to a requiem Mass presided over by Cardinal Bertone, Mr Berlusconi left his escort behind to walk among some of the mourners. Distraught relatives latched on to him, appealing to him to do something that even he, powerful though he may be, could not do: give them back their loved ones. All that Italy could and did do yesterday was to give them a dignified send-off, to pay tribute to so much suffering.
Italy lays its dead to rest: page 9;
Why was Italy so unprepared? Weekend Review, page 3