In Italy, a 70-year-old woman was found seated on her dining table two years after her death. Marinella Beretta had no living relatives and she was found in her house in Prestino near Lake Como in northern Italy.
The police found her mummified remains when they made a house call during high winds in Lombardy. The woman’s body has now been moved to a morgue where experts will determine the cause of death.
Family Minister Elena Bonetti, on Facebook, said, “What happened to Marinella Beretta in Como, the forgotten loneliness, hurts our consciences. We have a duty, as a community that wants to remain united, to remember her life … no one must be left alone.”
Como Mayor Mario Landriscina has claimed that the local government will be taking all the responsibility for Beretta’s funeral. Also, the mayor has invited all town residents to offer prayers.
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“I will try to be there and invite the city to be present. This is the moment to be together, and even if this woman had no relatives, we could become her relatives,” Mayor Landriscina said.
A 2018 report by the national statistics institute said that nearly 40 per cent of people of over-75-year-olds in Italy live alone. Not only this but they have no friends or relatives.
Editorialist Massimo Gramellini on the front page of the Corriere Della Sera, Italy’s biggest selling daily, described Beretta as “loneliness personified.”
“Many of us still have memories of the chaotic, branched families of peasant Italy. Instead, the modern family is reduced… People die alone. And we live alone, which is almost worse,” he said.
(With inputs from agencies)
