Gone but still with a place in the world. In via Milano in Sassari where 18 children, taken from their lives, find themselves next to each other in the stem, the flowers and roots of an almond tree planted in their memory by their parents.
"We adopted this area from the Municipality in December 2022 - explains Milena, mother of Claudia, who died as soon as she was of age - with the help of the Vivi il neighborhood association".
They find cement, tar and waste material from a nearby construction site, but they clean everything up, create 4 laurel-edged entrances, graft 250 seedlings, mostly privet, in an area bordering the racecourse, and whose heart is precisely the almond trees .
"We saw them - reports Luciana, mother of Alessio, who died at the age of 18 in 2021 - in the community of Romena, and chosen because they are a symbol of rebirth and resurrection".
Many donations from private individuals for the "Giardino degli Angeli", also anonymously, including the leucolea, a rare variety of olive tree, whose fruits are ivory white.
"We water everything - reveals Angela, whose daughter was Valentina, who died at the age of 39 - with bins because they didn't give us water". Hundreds and hundreds of liters poured every week with effort and love, in an activity that is anything but funereal.
"We are not building a cemetery - they all say, from Maria Antonietta to Ilenia to Roberta, who have the concession for one year of the area - This is a hymn to life". Meanwhile, each almond tree is embellished with pinwheels, sunflowers and paper butterflies, waiting for a virtual one to develop from the arboreal reality. "We want to create - declares Donato, Claudia's father - a heart-shaped QR code which, framed, refers to the history of our children in the pages dedicated to them".
A flowering web that travels together with the almond tree, the first tree to blossom in spring, and that renews nature after winter death, just as the creatures that disappeared before time, "the children in heaven", return to memory, with the example and in the positive drive to promote life. As is happening with the Garden of Angels.
