Cassano doesn’t breathe, he holds his breath, he holds back his tears, that pain too great to be named. We live as if in apnea. It is the day of the funeral of Chiara Garofalo, just twenty years old, and of Antonio Graziadio, her boyfriend. Since Sunday morning, since that tragic accident that took them away from their lives, the community has been living in suspense: the city’s mourning, proclaimed by mayor Gianpaolo Iacobini, is only the official framework and necessary act of a silence that has immediately inhabited every street, every house, every look filled with tears. Since dawn on Sunday a human river has invaded the municipal cemetery. First for Chiara, who was immediately returned to her family, then for Antonio, immediately after the toxicological test carried out by Dr. Francesca Pepe. The funeral procession that left the cemetery was made up of hundreds of people who accompanied the two boys on their last earthly journey towards the minor basilica of Santa Maria del Lauro, where the bishop of the diocese and vice-president of the CEI, Francesco Savino, presided over the rite.
The basilica was too small to contain the sea of people who came to say a farewell that was impossible to accept. The white coffins, placed at the foot of the altar and covered in roses, close as they have been in recent months, as they have been until the end of 2019, they will be close for eternity.
