No one should die in spring, reflects Pedro González as he shows photos of the bouquets of flowers that he collected from his garden every day to take to his wife, admitted to a hospital in Barcelona after having suffered a stroke.
"There were 40 visits and 40 bouquets."
Until May 14, 2021, when “la Núria Gasull”, his Núria, passed away.
She had just turned 80 and he, who is now 73, says they spent "a moment that lasted 45 years" together.
Pedro's life was dismantled.
He tells that it was with his death that he knew "the word suffering".
On the worst days, after holding his own in the hospital, he would explode.
He "cried in the corners until he got to the bus, and in a park next to home for hours."
No one ever asked him what was wrong with him.
This Thursday, his letter to the director of EL PAÍS, in which he recounted how "extraordinary" his wife was, her heartbreak and the lack of empathy of a society anesthetized by the pain of others, moved hundreds of readers.
He receives the visit without being aware of it, he is not very aware of the networks.
He wrote the text to honor “la Núria” on the anniversary of her death.
Her eyes get wet at times, in many others they shine talking about her.
He is surprised that "a little story" arouses interest.
A "little story" that probably tells the story of many of the almost three million widows and widowers in Spain.
Of the 2.1 million people aged 65 or over who lived alone in 2020, more than half had lost their partner, according to INE data.
The "little story" of Pedro and Núria is, in fact, extraordinary.
He falls in love with her when he talks about her, about the books and music they shared about her, about how they held her hand when they got excited together at the Lyceum.
Of the eternal dinners in their garden, when they took care of every detail and toasted with cava.
They lived a thousand lives together.
She was a stewardess, tour guide, theater and music teacher.
He was an architect and spent 20 years teaching technical drawing, cinema, design... They even had a restaurant.
He is now retired.
"Since we haven't had children, we have dedicated ourselves a lot to shrews, to appreciating the blues on the Costa Brava, to the movies," he says.
to the opera
"We met in the fall when Franco was dying," says Pedro, when both were enrolled in Art History and the corridors of the university were bustling and debates proliferated.
“One day Núria got up and I said: Look at this one, how she argues, and without saying a word”, he laughs.
“It was
boom
”, she adds while snapping her fingers and remembering her green dress with flowers and her curly hair.
She tells it in Ciudad Real, where he has just moved in just two weeks ago, after selling a house in Barcelona that had become a "way of the cross" and that "was impregnated with it."
In what has been the worst year of her life, many times she closed the windows and screamed.
She was at the supermarket when they called to give her the news of her death.
He had gone to visit her that morning.
“I spent two days without hearing anything.
It must have been a reaction: well now I don't want to know anything”, reasons Pedro, who wears hearing aids.
“Because of the years and the suffering” he has become “a little deaf”.
“Life without Núria has been lonely and empty.
It's terrible.
And since we have shared so much... Each sentence of a book was of the two, the metaphors that we used”.
As she speaks, she echoes a bit in a house with still bare walls and empty shelves.
"I'm going to make a secular altar here, hanging two of the paintings that she painted," he points to one side of the room, on some furniture made by him, in which he has outlined part of the drawings of his wife.
A house without books, he is horrified to say.
Of the 140 boxes that he keeps in his sister's warehouse, 66 are full of books.
The first thing he wants to do is set up the library.
Pedro González, this Friday at his home in Ciudad Real.
Claudia Alvarez
After the death of his wife, he spent many days without speaking to anyone, "he didn't have the chance, and he would have been grateful."
12% of the citizens of the European Union feel alone more than half the time, according to data from the Joint Research Center of the European Commission, based on a 2016 survey. In the first months, after the outbreak of the pandemic, in 2020, this figure climbed around 25%.
Pedro counts on his brothers and gives thanks for it.
They are the reason why he has moved to Ciudad Real, he has returned to the province in which he was born.
His little sister has taken great care of him.
“I come so that you love me a little”, she remembers that she told them, that they are from a family “so austere” in terms of feelings.
But Pedro feels lonely, because Núria is no longer there.
She remembers a succession of last times, beginning with a worsening of diabetes that landed her in the hospital in 2009. Since then she has never been the same.
In 2010 was the last time they spent the summer in Llafranc [Costa Brava].
July 2018 was the last time someone was invited to dinner in the garden.
That Christmas, the last one that Núria prepared her famous broth.
“In 2019 we started it fatal, the falls began.”
And calls to the telecare service.
They spent two years without leaving home, they were already isolated before the pandemic.
"But in the head it was perfect," he says.
At the beginning of the hospital admission, Pedro spent two weeks without seeing her, due to the restrictions of the pandemic, and he remembers those days with horror.
Then he would take photos of her so she could see what was new in the garden, in the neighborhood.
"I tried to make her laugh, I even danced a sevillana once, I don't know how to dance them," she recalls.
She spent two months hospitalized.
Everyone in the plant knew that Núria called him “cuqui”.
It was the last week when she lost hope, she no longer spoke and the doctor told her that she did not want to eat.
“She never made a scene for me.
She only one day she told me: Give me a hug.
And I thought: It's over.
The farewell".
In those days and months the anxiety ate him up and he couldn't hold back the tears.
So many people walked past him, engrossed in their cell phones.
“No consideration”, especially in big cities.
"There are no
humanitas,"
he reflects.
Six months ago, she wouldn't have been able to have this conversation "without bawling," she says.
Now he wants to fix the garden of his brothers, take a trip.
He has to set up a life without Núria.
Without his Núria.