Mattia and his keys jingling when he enters the oratory. Mattia who arrived in two minutes when someone called him for a lift or to avoid having to walk that dark stretch of road alone. Mattia who was the first fan – and the sound engineer – in the stands at the Polisportiva Sant’Ambrogio matches. Mattia and his “Yeppa”. Mattia and his love for motorbikesthose motorbikes that “betrayed” him on the asphalt between Viale Kennedy and Viale Ticino in Nerviano, where his life ended too soon, at just 20 years old.
It is a church of SS. Gervaso and Protaso as full as we haven’t seen for a long time, which yesterday, Monday 24 June, welcomed the vigil organized to remember Mattia Dattis, the 20 year old who died in the tragic accident on Saturday 22nd. A moved church, full of the pain not only of his family but also of the many, many friends who still cannot believe what happened, but who are already ready to make a promise: to never forget Mattia, and his smile, the one he always had on his lips, the common thread that united all the stories of educators, friends, boys from the oratory, athletes from the Polisportiva Sant’Ambrogio and members of the theater company I Pischifralli in memory of a boy who left his community before his time.
«I think I can interpret everyone’s feelings if I say that here each of us tonight carries a heart full of pain, full of sadnessbecause we are here to remember Mattia, a friend for many of us and for many of us a brother, for me in particular a very valid collaborator who in these years of oratory has given me a hand in all circumstances – the words with which Don Ronel Scotton, parochial vicar of the pastoral community Sant’Ambrogio di Parabiago, opened the vigil -. These are days when we are all struggling: I think above all of his family, but also with the kids these days we are having moments together to try to lighten this burden. But this evening we don’t want fatigue to prevail, we want it to be an evening spent together, a moment we live for Mattia. We have always been used to receiving from him, he was the one who did it for us: tonight, however, we are the ones who want to do something for him».
Then the memories of those who shared a piece of the road with Mattia, whether long or short. Until he composed the phrase that represented him most of all: “Life is too short to be slow”. «Today we are here first and foremost to collect a legacy, a legacy that Mattia leaves to each of us. And I believe the legacy is precisely contained in this phrase: life must be lived to the full until the last moment – underlined the parish vicar -. We who knew him know that Mattia was like this: he lived everything to the full, even in his frenzy, in his dynamism of doing a hundred things per second, but everything done to the end, in every single moment.”
«There are many young people here today, and I believe that the message that each of us, especially them, can take home is this: there’s no time to get depressed, there’s no time to get angry, there’s no time to complain. We live fully every moment: all the times we get angry, depressed or sad are times that are thrown away. None of us will ever be asked to take Mattia’s place, he was unique in his uniqueness like each of us, but something is asked of us: we can take Mattia as an example, we can take his community to heart as he did. Each of us can do a little piece of him: Mattia was one and did a hundred things, maybe a hundred of us can do the same hundred things that Mattia dideveryone does their part.”
