Two years after her death, the body of a woman who was living alone in her home was discovered
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The discovery of the decomposing body of a seventy-year-old woman in her chair more than two years after her death shocked Italy this week, sparking a debate over the loneliness of the elderly.
Marinella Beretta, who has no family, was found dead inside her home in Pristino, near Lake Como in Lombardy (north), and her neighbors have not seen her for at least two and a half years, according to media reports.
Police officers discovered the decomposing remains of her body when they came to the scene after receiving a warning about the danger of falling trees in her garden.
Family Minister Elena Bonetti said in a Facebook post that what happened to Marinella Beretta in Como "shakes consciences," adding that "a society that wants to remain united has a duty to remember her while she is alive."
She said, "We must stop limiting our horizons to our narrow circle of acquaintances, and we must start again by paying attention to the ties that unite us... No one should be left alone."
In Italy, about 40 percent of people over the age of 75 live alone, according to a report issued by the National Institute of Statistics dated 2018, and the same percentage represents people who do not have relatives or friends to turn to when needed.
Journalist Massimo Gramellini, in an article published in Italy's best-selling newspaper, Corriere della Sera, said that Marinella Beretta was "the embodiment of unity".
He wrote: "Many of us still have memories of the big families in the Italian countryside,
and instead, modern families have shrunk in size, people are dying alone. We live alone as well and that's worse."
Beretta's neighbors, who had not seen her since September 2019, believed that she had changed her place of residence at the start of the Covid-19 epidemic that swept Italy in early 2020.
The police at the scene did not find any evidence that could point to a suspicious death.
The municipality of Pristino must bear the costs of the burial.
"The mystery that enveloped Marinella's life behind the closed gate of her house teaches us a terrible lesson, and the real sadness is not that others did not know her death, but that they did not notice her during her life," newspaper El Messaggero wrote.
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