Today is one of those hard days – when, without saying anything, you say everything.

I feel an endless pain, an injustice, a brutal helplessness that drags us down.

I take two steps forward and three back. Sometimes the pain feels less constant over time, but when it tightens, it hurts more than ever. These are my moments – sometimes shared with kindred souls, sometimes not. Some I keep to myself, I fight them, I cry with them, and I scream with them.

Because there is no greater sorrow in this world than having your soul torn away. That’s what happened when what was supposed to be a simple outpatient procedure of a few hours became the worst moment of my life – coming home alone. An empty house without his scent, without playing football with Max on the terrace, without his “babaus” lying with him on the sofa. His whole being vanished, leaving me surrounded by a halo of loneliness, emptiness, and loss that I’ll never be able to fill with anything or anyone. We all create memories in the lives of those we love. Oscar was special and he earned, by right, a place in the minds of everyone who ever loved him in any way.

The night, both awake or just sitting on the sofa – everything feels sad. We look for something funny to watch, something to distract us, something to keep us from thinking about his absence.

I would give anything to argue with him about his messy room, about his long showers, or for not tidying up. I would give anything to smother him with kisses until he pushed me away for being annoying, to hug him for no reason, or to listen to his stories from training his football team, “the dragons.”

“How are you?” they ask me. There are days that will always feel like day 1 of this nightmare. Other days, the sun comes out and gives me a truce – allowing me to smile at life with the inner peace that comes from feeling my son near me. In a different way, yes, but still very close. That’s what helps me get up.

Who lost more? Of course, Oscar did – without a doubt. He lost his future, his dreams, his hopes and all the motivation an eighteen-year-old could have. The sadness and grief we carry deep inside holds us down and hurts us. But if we think about the fact that we still have the chance he no longer has – to live a life full of color – then our ego, my own ego, loses importance. Even so, I never imagined something could hurt so deeply, so constantly, for so long.

Learning to live with this pain is a timeless struggle, a battle with no truce – it’s forever, and that’s what hurts the most. Day by day, we allow ourselves to breathe, because sighing into the air is all we can do.

It hurts to see life go on around us – indifferent, at a pace and speed we can’t match. Sometimes people even find it uncomfortable to talk about death. They avoid that conversation, something as real as life itself. It hurts them, even unsettles them, to speak of what they don’t understand – to talk about pain, something so ever-present in my daily existence. Talking about Oscar, and about everything he is in my life, would keep me awake for hours – daydreaming, remembering a thousand and one stories. For all that, I would endure this life of sorrow and still be grateful for those eighteen years by his side, watching him grow in every possible way. I would never trade even one night of pain for not having had him. How lucky we were.

If losing a child is already unbearable, losing one in such a senseless, traumatic, and unjust way makes everything infinitely worse. We weren’t given time – no goodbyes, no last look into each other’s eyes.

How can I make those people understand – the ones who didn’t care for Oscar as they should have, who weren’t competent enough to be in charge of that operating room? How can I make them understand that they are responsible for our pain? Now all I can do is say goodnight to a photograph – thankful that I took so many of them. I still see his banner at the football field on my way to work, near the place he loved so much. I order the most beautiful flowers to honor his resting place, which I often visit because, in that way too, it keeps me close to him.

Laughing with someone who makes you forget you were sad – that’s magic. Oscar always makes me smile. Just thinking of his energy keeps me going and pushes me forward one day at a time.