“THElife, as you know, is not always to be held; in fact it is a good thing not to live but to live well. Therefore the wise man will live as long as he must, not as long as he can”, writes Seneca in Letters to Lucilius (Epistle LXX). And in a scene of the film Grace Anna Ferzetti (Dorotea) asks her father Toni Servillo (Mariano De Santis), regarding a law on euthanasia: «Whose days are ours?».
Valentina Petrini in her book The price of freedom. Sibilla and Anna, a story of disobedience (Solferino) – dedicated to the last period of the life of two very different women, who do not know each other but are united by an illness that forces them to suffer from disabling and unbearable pain – seems to want to answer that our last days must belong to us, and perhaps they are those in which we must express ourselves with even greater conviction.
According to Valentina Petrini, talking about euthanasia also means taking a position on the most fragile categories and defending rights that exist on paper but are not applied in practice: the care of the protagonist Anna falls entirely on her sister of the same agedespite having the right to free home care, a caregiver allowance, physiotherapy support and psychiatric support for her and her family…
Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
It also means reflecting on the National Health System as a whole: in the book a very bitter truth is revealed, namely that Palliative care is currently denied in Italy to the majority of people who are entitled to itsubjected to very long waiting lists, at a time in life when every minute can be tiring.
“The price of freedom. Sibilla and Anna, a story of disobedience” by Valentina Petrini (Solferino)
The director of the Mario Negri Institute Giuseppe Remuzziauthor of the essay in turn On tiptoe (Mondadori) recalled – guest of Giorgio Zanchini – how it is equally important to resuscitate as to interrupt treatment, when it is futile.
The Constitution says it: no one can be forced to undergo a specific health treatment except by law“which can never violate the limits of respect for the human person”.
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All articles by Aldo Cazzullo.
