Nostalgia

⏱️ Reading time: 2 min.

I am a medical oncologist with long years of professional work. I started attending the children’s hospital and became passionate about onco-paediatrics. I saw first hand the dramas of my little patients, innocent victims of cancer. Until the day an angel came into my life. My angel came in the form of an 11-year-old girl. She was subjected for two long years to various treatments, manipulations, injections and great suffering, involving chemo and radiotherapy programmes, but I never saw my little angel tremble.
I saw her cry often; I also saw fear in her small eyes, but that is human.
One day, I arrived at the hospital and found my angel alone in her little room. I asked her about her mother. Even today I cannot recount the answer she gave me without feeling deep emotion.
“Doctor,” she told me, “my mother often leaves the room to cry, hiding in the corridors. When I die, I think she will be left with a lot of nostalgia. But I am not afraid to die. I was not born for this life.”
I asked her, “What is death to you?”
“Look, doctor, when we are little, we often want to sleep in our parents’ room and, in the morning, we wake up in our own room, don’t we?”
“Yes, we do,” I replied.
And she said, “One day I will go to sleep and my Father will come to find me and I will wake up in his house.
That will be my real life.”
I stood petrified, not knowing what to say, surprised by the maturity and spiritual vision of that child.
“And my mother will have even more nostalgia,” she added.
Thrilled, holding back tears, I asked, “What does ‘nostalgia’ mean to you, my child?”
“Nostalgia is the love that remains.”

Today, at 53 years of age, I challenge anyone to give a better, more direct and simple definition of the word ‘nostalgia’: it is the love that remains and does not go away!

My little angel has been gone for many years. But she left me a great lesson that helped me to make my life better, to try to be more human and gentle with my patients, to rediscover true values. How beautiful that there is nostalgia, love that remains forever! Let us be more human, pleasant with people. Let us live simply. Let us love generously. Let us care intensely. Let us speak kindly and, above all, let us not demand too much.