‘Funeral cards’ helped an old Italian through lockdown, before his own was made

Each time he went to a funeral, Gino Verani came away with a “santino”, the traditional laminated card with a picture of the deceased on the front and a prayer on the back.

Over the years he would slip them into two small cardboard boxes in a drawer in the living room of his house in San Fiorano — a town in northern Italy that was at the epicentre of the country’s coronavirus pandemic — with his watch, an outdated cellphone and his keys.

By the time Verani died on September 6 at the age of 88, he had collected nearly 150 “santini”, so-called because they are similar to cards bearing images of Roman Catholic saints.

Often, in moments of despair Gino Verani would ask his wife, Ines, to sit next to him. (Marzio Toniolo/Reuters)

Those cards depicting friends and sometimes children of friends became part of the many games his family devised to keep Verani’s mind active against encroaching dementia during lockdown.

“I would occasionally lay them all out on a table and ask him to identify the pictures,” said his grandson, Marzio Toniolo, 35, a schoolteacher in the same town.

“He remembered many of them, more than he remembered what he did a while ago,” he said.

At one point during the three-month lockdown from March to May, four generations of the Verani-Toniolo family were living under the same roof, ranging from Toniolo’s three-year-old daughter, Bianca, to Verani, her great-grandfather.

Gino Verani gestures to bad luck as he rests his arm after falling down a flight of stairs. (Marzio Toniolo/Reuters)

Games were necessary because only short walks were permitted within 200 metres of the house.

Wearing a mask and wool hat, Verani would often stop to stare listlessly at a bulletin board where death notices were posted, a tradition that continues in Italy’s smaller cities and towns.

“After all of the restrictions were lifted (on June 3), he felt totally liberated. His mood improved and his body showed it for a while too,” Toniolo said.

This was one of the last times Gino Verani was able to shave independently. Two months later, he was no longer able to do so, so a barber came to the house weekly to cut his beard and hair. (Marzio Toniolo/Reuters)

But during the summer Verani fell twice. He no longer could manage the stairs, so the family, including his wife, Ines, 85, Toniolo’s wife, Chiara, 32, and his mother, set up an area on the ground floor where Verani could sleep in a single bed.

He had slept beside Ines their entire married life of 63 years. He was restless in the single bed. When he did sleep, it was badly. When family members cleaned him, he complained of pain.

The family decided to move Verani to a care home in a nearby town so professionals could look after him and Ines reluctantly agreed. Because of a two-week quarantine rule, they realised they might not see him alive again.

Bianca Toniolo holds hands with her great-grandfather, Gino Verani, as they watch the news. Though Gino and Bianca loved each other very much, Gino struggled to respect social-distancing rules, which sometimes irritated Bianca, said her father, Marzio Toniolo. It was just as hard to make her understand her great-grandfather's difficulties, he said. (Marzio Toniolo/Reuters)

“From that moment, my grandmother closed up inside herself, oppressed by feelings of guilt because, as she put it, ‘we sent him off to die far from home’,” Toniolo said.

Verani died a week later of natural causes and his body was brought home. He was dressed in his best suit and put in a coffin, flanked by two large candles, for a 24-hour wake in the living room, a tradition in a country where funeral homes are not commonly used.

Almost the whole town turned out to see him. Each person received a “santino” with Verani’s picture on it. Toniolo added one to the boxes in the living room drawer, retiring his grandfather’s collection forever.

— © Reuters