Marina Berlusconi: “My father Silvio and his latest writing on life, party, family”

The first daughter and a last written. A day last June in the hospital “that I will never, ever forget. I don’t even want it”, the illness that was consuming the founder of Forza Italia “his health was compromised” and those last hours “before separating from life”. Marina Berlusconi he was next to his father Silvio at San Raffaele nine months ago, “I had visited him the previous evening, I had seen him well, the hope that the illness would give him a little more time had rekindled”. The next day – he says – he was another man: “Abandoned in an armchair, very tired, gloomy, suffering. For me it was a terrible blow. He was accompanied from the chair to the table. He asked for paper and pen, bowed his head and began to write, evidently he had already thought during the night, as always, about what he wanted to say. I sat next to him and watched him work.”

The document

In the preface of the book written by Paolo Del Debbio Marina Berlusconi recounts the last hours and “my father’s last writing”, written down in the hospital room a few hours before, on the morning of June 12, 2023, “he separated from life. It is a document that seems to me to be both tragic and great at the same time.”

The tears

Silvio Berlusconi’s first daughter says that “At a certain point she stopped, looked up, and said: «You see, Marina, life is like this: come, do, do, do… and then you leave». I don’t know how I managed not to burst into tears, a few tears fell anyway. He understood. He looked at me with a very sweet smile, he took my hand and caressed it slowly. Then he started writing again”

The written

And when he finished the first page “he handed it to me, I read it. And the world fell on me. Because I realized that what she was writing was hers ideal legacyhis testamentthe summary of beliefs and gods values who had accompanied him. I knew the end was near, but realizing that he was fully aware of it too. He continued to write, and when he had finished he asked to be taken back to bed. I remained there frozen, pretending not to have understood what we both understood very well.”

The four pages

“I then read and reread those four pages dozens of times and every time I take my breath away. They are a very private memory, but I think it is right that they should not remain just a private memory. I like to share them with those who loved him, but also with those who didn’t love him but cannot help but recognize his uniqueness.”

“They represent a tragically human document but, I believe, of absolute greatness. With a more uncertain handwriting, less fluid phrasing, many corrections”. For Marina Berlusconi they testify to the fragility that her father did not want to hide but “together, the greatness. Because, a few hours after his death, he wanted to reiterate once again, knowing that it would be the last, his last hymn to his love, love for family, love for others, irreducible love for freedom and democracy, for peace and justice, boundless love for the creature he founded on these values, that Forza Italia to which he dedicated thirty years of his life.

Today, reflecting on this, I would be able to find the right words to respond to what my father said to me: “Dad, like all men you may go, but what you have done will never go away”.