The Christmas holidays are upon us, the Christmas trees are lit, hugs are consumed under an atmosphere of joy and lightheartedness, between gifts and smiles. This is not the case everywhere, unfortunately, because there are many families who daily experience the anguish of disappearance; a limbo with no way out in which answers are awaited for days, months or years. Traces or signals that, in many cases, do not arrive.

Today we celebrate the “Day dedicated to missing persons”, promoted by the Penelope association, which has been taking care of the disappeared and family members who are waiting to find out where their loved ones are for years. The buildings all over Italy light up green, a sign of hope. A beacon that is always on for all the families who ask for answers, who struggle side by side with the association every day and await an imminent return home.

The disappearance of a loved one represents the cancellation of everyday life. An indescribable pain that erases all security. Fathers, mothers looking for their children who have vanished into thin air, putting up posters and launching appeals on the web and in every possible channel. Faces and smiles crystallized in old Polaroids that become an integral part of the life of every viewer, generating emotions and closeness. A fragility that becomes empathic, unfiltered, reminding everyone that no one is immune to pain. The houses of relatives become small temples of remembrance and memory, in which each object contains fragments of dissolved but inviolable life.

It doesn't matter if the world outside the window changes, transforming dramatically. It does not matter. The room of a father, a mother or a missing son will always contain a memory that nothing and no one can ever erase, just like the hope of a hug that sooner or later will arrive, perhaps on the street, perhaps in another city. or perhaps even beyond the door that will open again as before.

Angelo Barraco

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