Rome, May 7, 2022 – La Mother’s Day when you have lost the dearest person in the world in the Rigopiano massacre. A pang in the heart and a thought of love. Gaia Matrone with the dad Giampaolo, escaped the valanga killer, thus lives this date. And this year the little girl – whom she had touched Italy by writing a heartbreaking letterin 2018 – helped his dad to pack a fruit cake, called Valentina like his mom who never came home, decorated with one sugar star because she imagines it that way.
Today Gaia she is 11 years old and a father who is also her mother, with the courage shown in the days of the tragedy, when she resisted for 62 hours under the rubble of the hotel engulfed by an avalanche that he took away 29 fast. For that disaster, the process is still in its infancy.
Giampaolo Matrone confides: “With Gaia we remember Valentina only and always with a smile. She wanted to get two fuchsia streaks, I said to joke, you know how much you made me fight, if mom was there … “.
There are however two thorns. “Gaia often asks me, but why you had to go there? “, she means at the Rigopiano hotel, she had stayed at home with her grandparents. Then she adds:” And every time she hears me talking to lawyers she repeats to me, whoever made a mistake must pay. He sees me fighting, he trusts me. ”After five and a half years, the trial is only in its infancy.