It was 10 o’clock in the morning and he was still lying down on a cold bed in the dark shadow that the curtains provided. It was actually a one of those sunny days and fall was just starting.

His gaze seemed lost, as if he didn’t know exactly where he was or what he was doing there. The expression on his face suddenly changed as the hope for interaction with another person was instilled in by the sound of the door opening.

He sat, and looked at me with a suspicious look. Nevertheless he seemed interaction and was curious enough to speak to me. He understood quite soon the reason of my visit and said straight away that freedom was what mattered to him the most.

His speech reflected his feelings and somehow was a mirror of the reality he had been living during the past days. I tried to follow him through the various philosophical theories he was mentioning and his confabulation until he stated a very clear and intransigent thought: without freedom he might as well die!

Quite drastic if you think of it, especially when you consider that freedom seems more as an utopia concept in the modern world that an actual possibility.

We continued speaking until, all of a sudden, he remembered something. Something so ancient and remote that he seemed to have forgotten all his life.

He was 4 years old when his grandmother was dying confined into a room that nobody used to enter. He was the only one going into that dark room. He would breath with her, imitating his breathing. He wished her to live and he continued doing so until the day she stopped. It was the first time he wished to die.

“I have found something very important whilst speaking with you today, something I had long forgotten and lost. Somehow what I found had always been with me and gave me the strength to desire life”.