02/03/2020 - 20:03
- Clarín.com
- Society
Graciela puts play on her cell phone screen and travels to that other reality that is now played in the video. In the images of the last New Year as a family , she laughs and dances with Fernando Báez Sosa, her son. He makes her spin until they both get dizzy. There is a laugh and Fernando's voice: "For the other side, mom." He puts it on and on, he still feels his hand, his hug, his smell and that "mom ". He strokes the screen and replies with a "my love." Then he smiles and in the end he cries. “I keep going for him, he didn't like seeing me badly, but I'm dead in life, ” says the mother of the 18-year-old boy killed by a rugby boot at the exit of a bowling alley in Villa Gesell.
Football fan and solidarity
"Fernando is." Thus begin many of his sentences. When he names him in the present and returns to the happy days, before the dawn of January 18, he seems to regain peace. They are instants, they pass quickly and despair over their absence invades it again.
“In the week, when he had to go to college, he had a hard time waking up and he had to insist, but on Saturdays, he had football, always started early,” Graciela remembers. “ He loved to play, he was a defender, Boca fan . He did vocational guidance before leaning towards the Law. Another option was to become a Physical Education teacher, ”he continues and shows more photos of Fernando, now in full court kicking a ball.
“So cute, so good, my son didn't deserve what they did to him ,” he laments loudly. He says that he was very supportive, that in winter he toured the neighborhood of Caballito delivering hot meals to people in a street situation and that he was always surrounded by friends. "When you can, give me a turn," Graciela told him in a joke. "You always have me, mom," Fernando replied.
He had recently started working from home and with the computer in an advertising project. "So he put together his little plate, with which he booked the hostel of Gesell," he says. And he says that he was doing well in the faculty: “When the CBC finished and approved everything, I began to tell Fernando Burlando , he wanted to be a successful lawyer. I never imagined that I would meet the real Mocking in such a situation. ”
The memory drawer
He says that this Sunday, for the first time, he was encouraged to review his son's things and found a box full of memories. “There was a kind of intimate newspaper in which Fernando wrote what was happening to him. For the end, he talks about Juliet and closes with a 'will continue' ”, details Graciela and breaks again. “With her they had shared high school in the Marianist and a year ago they started dating. At first, I told my husband everything, with me I was more reserved . She is divine, she is also destroyed, ”adds Graciela. And remember the first day Fernando took her home. “That time, I didn't meet her. Fer asked me to leave to invite her. I was walking for several hours on Eleven, waiting for my son to let me know to come back, ”he remembers and laughs. And it shows videos in which Julieta and Fernando play to do acrobatics, another of the two riding a bicycle in the rain. Smiling, happy.
"Fernando is dead"
For that family, the world collapsed on a Saturday morning, two weeks ago. “ The phone rang at 6 . It was the mother of a companion of Fer. When he named my son I started to shake, ”he continues.
First he was told that he had been transferred to a hospital. Then he managed to communicate with a friend and Juliet, who spoke to him worried from the police station but without details about the health of his son. “I was already putting together a bag with clothes, I was going to Gesell, I thought to take care of my son. That until a commissioner called, ”says Graciela, who began to feel bad and handed her cell phone to her husband. Silvino answered "yes" three times to the voice on the phone. Then he cut, looked at his wife and told him: "Fernando is dead."
Graciela shouted, cried, released several "no", hit her husband, hugged him, felt she could not breathe anymore. "At the beginning they said in the news that the deceased boy was from La Plata, so I traveled to the Coast with the hope that he was not my Fernando, " confesses the mother whose face is deformed when she decides to talk about the moment in he who had to recognize his son's body, full of blows. “All I wanted was to hug him,” he adds, already exhausted.
A very special call
This Saturday morning his phone rang again. On the screen he read "unknown number" and his first reaction was not attending. But on the other side they insisted and her husband, Silvino, accepted the contact.
- Who speaks?
- Pope Francis
- Who?
- Pope Francis, do I speak with Fernando's parents?
The cell phone almost slips from his hands, Silvino and Graciela put the phone on a table and activated the speaker. “ I call you to bring you my solidarity . I want to tell you that Fernando is in my prayers and that what happened is very painful for everyone. ”
The talk did not last more than two minutes because the conversation was choppy. This time was enough for Bergoglio to tell them how he got the phone: "He told us he could have our number through the Marianist school," Graciela says, still excited. For the end he promised that he would call again soon.
Fernando's 13 goals
Fernando's room remains as he left it the day he traveled with his friends to Villa Gesell. Graciela comes in when she can, when she needs to remember. Thus, in one of the drawers, mixed between the clothes, he found a paper handwritten by his son . A somewhat crumpled white sheet with thirteen items that he himself had thought of as a role model, a project for his life.
The paper written by Fernando found by his mother Graciela.
1) Participate in the “Serve” project (a solidarity plan that helps to refurbish public school facilities in different humble areas of the province of Buenos Aires)
2) Strengthen my group of friends and keep it
3) Always be as I am with everyone. Show me how I am.
4) Mature with my university decision
5) Finish the secondary as I would have liked.
4) Mature with my university decision
5) Finish the secondary as I would have liked.
6) Continue with the race and I do well
7) Travel
8) Learn to concentrate more
9) Save
10) Leave the cell phone
11) Turn off the computer and TV
12) Study
13) Charity Friday
