"Who infected me? Impossible to know, in those days in Isili everyone had Covid ». A year has passed but it seems like a lifetime ago. Fausto Coni, 62, has been working since he was a child and in those days - the interminable days of illness, isolation and forced closure - he always had only one certainty: "Everything would end well." He was right, at least in terms of his family history. “I, my wife, my daughter, my son-in-law, the child, my sister, her husband and their little girl got sick. Everyone, the only one who was saved, no one knows how, was my son Alessandro ».
The hardest moments
One year after the terrible autumn of 2020 with the town in the red zone, closed shutters, deserted schools and the fear that anyone carrying the virus, Fausto Coni remembers everything sitting at a table in the Goldfinch, the managed hotel restaurant family that opened 44 years ago: "If I think about it, on August 27 Fabio was having dinner here, he was sitting near the door because there was no room inside". He extends his arm to indicate a chair that is not there, then lowers his eyes to the light floor and is silent. There is nothing more to add. Because at the table where the mayor Luca Pilia and the councilors Enrico Melis and Marco Addis drink a coffee, one more word is not needed: everything in Isili began more or less like this. Fabio is Fabio Lecis, who died of Covid at the age of 33 after having looked after his sick parents to the last breath. A big boy with a good heart who had pledged his diploma from oss to take care of mother Isabella and father Marco among the four rooms beyond the concrete blocks of vico Gialeto, the historic center of the town. From here they took him away now without hope on September 23 of the blackest year: he died on the threshold of the Holy Trinity. "It was the worst day": Luca Pilia has no doubts. That morning he carved it on our heads. «They phoned me because they couldn't contact Fabio to swab and I sent the policeman to call him. He had looked out the window but was very pale, tired. They came to get him in the evening but when he got to the hospital it was too late ». The country for the first time was in full emergency with over 120 infections on about 2,700 residents (the first wave never arrived here): the mayor's ordinance had closed offices and classrooms, families were barricaded at home. “We didn't know what to do, everything was unknown and complicated. Do the tests, find personnel who could treat the sick ». The hardest test came soon after. In addition to Fabio Lecis, the parents had also been hospitalized in the Covid ward of the Cagliari hospital. They sent them home on a Sunday in October, without warning. "I called the carabinieri. I did not know who to entrust them to and until we found a solution I did not allow them to get out of the ambulance ».
