I am a medical oncologist with long years of professional work. I started attending the children\u2019s 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.
\nI saw her cry often; I also saw fear in her small eyes, but that is human.
\nOne 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.
\n\u201cDoctor,\u201d she told me, \u201cmy 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.\u201d
\nI asked her, \u201cWhat is death to you?\u201d
\n\u201cLook, doctor, when we are little, we often want to sleep in our parents\u2019 room and, in the morning, we wake up in our own room, don\u2019t we?\u201d
\n\u201cYes, we do,\u201d I replied.
\nAnd she said, \u201cOne day I will go to sleep and my Father will come to find me and I will wake up in his house.
\nThat will be my real life.\u201d
\nI stood petrified, not knowing what to say, surprised by the maturity and spiritual vision of that child.
\n\u201cAnd my mother will have even more nostalgia,\u201d she added.
\nThrilled, holding back tears, I asked, \u201cWhat does \u2018nostalgia\u2019 mean to you, my child?\u201d
\n\u201cNostalgia is the love that remains.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, at 53 years of age, I challenge anyone to give a better, more direct and simple definition of the word \u2018nostalgia\u2019: it is the love that remains and does not go away!<\/p>\n
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.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am a medical oncologist with long years of professional work. I started attending the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":46670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":18,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[2193,2065,2627,2027,1961,2615,1943],"class_list":["post-46677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-good-night","tag-education","tag-famiglia-en","tag-god","tag-life","tag-salvation","tag-witnesses","tag-yooungsters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46684,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46677\/revisions\/46684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}