“Death already existed before my mother died; before, though, I saw it through binoculars, and now I see it through a magnifying glass. And I cannot look away.”
Marica Pietroni — English translation by GGE Team
Before, we knew from a distance
Death does not become real only when it takes someone we love. It was already there: in the news, in other families’ stories, at funerals we had attended. We knew it as one knows a place seen through binoculars. We could see it while still keeping our distance. That was not indifference. It was a way of going on with our plans without feeling the fragility of everything every day.
The magnifying glass does not enlarge death
A mother’s death changes that distance. The magnifying glass in the quotation does not make larger something that used to be small: it makes it impossible to leave that fact in the background. Her absence appears in the most ordinary things: news we would have shared with her, a habit that carried her voice, a date that once meant something different. The world goes on looking the same, yet we see it from a place that is no longer the same.
The words are about a mother, but this changed way of seeing can also belong to someone who loses a partner, a daughter or a friend. This is not a ranking of grief. Every bond occupied a unique place, and it is precisely that empty place that changes the perspective of the person left behind.
Unable to look away
The last words may be the hardest: “I cannot.” Grief does not obey an order. People who care about us sometimes suggest a distraction, ask us not to think about it, or tell us to turn the page. Their wish is understandable, but it can leave us feeling even more alone. We cannot always decide to stop seeing what happened; nor is there a duty to do so quickly.
That does not mean every minute will be filled with pain, or that smiling is disrespectful. We can laugh and suffer on the same day. We can become interested in something and, a moment later, keenly feel the absence of the person with whom we would have shared it. Grief does not move in a straight line, and the number of tears we shed does not measure the love we felt.
A gaze that changes the future too
When death no longer seems distant, the way we think about life also changes. We understand the value of a phone call, a visit, a sentence spoken while there is still time. Yet it would be unfair to demand that every loss immediately yield a useful lesson. Before pain teaches anything, it is pain. It may need time, silence, and the company of someone who is not trying to fix it.
Perhaps the most sincere way to be close to a grieving person is not to tell them where to look. It is to remain beside them when their gaze returns to the absence, and to listen without imposing a deadline.
Conclusion
The binoculars and the magnifying glass describe two ways of knowing the same truth. After a loss, returning to our former distance is not always possible. Slowly, and without betraying the person who is gone, we may learn to live with this altered gaze. Not to see less of the one we have lost, but to allow what remains of them in our lives to stay visible alongside their absence.
— Marica Pietroni