The loss of a child is the most excruciating experience a parent can experience. It puts you at a crossroads: you can either let the pain overwhelm you or try to transform it to give meaning to the most unnatural thing in existence.
Eight years after the death of their little girl Giulia, mother Eleonora Galia and father Alfio continue to bring life where perhaps one would expect to find only suffering. They did so last Friday, brightening the waiting room of the Pediatric Dermatology Department at San Giovanni di Dio: the sea on the walls, the new furnishings, the bookcase brimming with books. But in reality, they began shortly after letting go of their daughter, who on February 6, 2014, encountered cancer for the first time and, after four years of suffering, chemotherapy, prayers, and surgeries, took her away. At just ten years old. "Mom, I wish you would take all my toys and give them to children in need": these are the last wishes of a little girl who thought of others until the very end, entrusted to two parents who found the strength to overcome the most excruciating pain and to set in motion a wonderful machine of good.
They started on Via Giardini, in a small space of just a few square meters , where they decided to distribute toys, clothing, strollers, and baby supplies to families in need. This was the first step for the volunteer association "Il sogno di Giulia Zedda," which has continued to do great things since that day. They donated a pediatric ambulance, complete with a defibrillator, two stretchers, and a heated bassinet for transporting premature babies from hospitals to the Policlinico hospital, where the neonatal intensive care unit is located.
Thanks to the "Ci pensa Giulia" project, they continue to brighten up countless pediatric hospitals in Sardinia and donate new furnishings. From Iglesias to Nuoro, from Olbia to Sassari, and even Cagliari, they've brought cast bandages to alleviate illness, plasters with dinosaurs, hearts, and superheroes, fireproof chair beds, blood pressure and oxygen saturation monitors, chairs for doctors and patients, and much more. Thanks to the "Fill'e anima" project, they're offering schoolbooks, glasses, underwear, shoes, hearing aids, and baby food to families in need.
And goodness must be contagious, because many healthcare professionals have joined their noble cause: two dentists, an ENT specialist, an ophthalmologist, a gynecologist, three pediatric orthopedists, a lactation counselor, three nutritionists, and five psychologists. They are ready to welcome the children free of charge and treat them immediately, without waiting for the often excessively long waiting times of public healthcare. They also provide financial support to families forced to cover the costs of their children's cancer and other treatments, often outside the region. Meanwhile, they are working to raise the funds needed to purchase an apartment with a garden for young cancer patients from across the island, forced to travel to Cagliari to reach the only pediatric oncology and hematology unit in the region.
"We miss Giulia like the wind, now as then. The pain never goes away, perhaps it numbs us. But it lasts forever," explains mother Eleonora. "No one will give us our Giulia back, but being able to ease the pain of even just one child helps us make sense of the void."