It has been seven months since the tragic death of Fiorentina captain Davide Astori. On the day of his funeral, cameras captured his partner Francesca Fioretti, held up by the club’s stadium manager Eduardo Miano, her shock and grief so strong that she was barely able to hold herself upright.
This weekend, Francesca spoke in the press for the first time since the terrible tragedy, sharing the immense strength she has found for the sake of her daughter. Here, it is translated into English for The Sportsman.
"On March 5 [the day after his death], I took my daughter to school and then went to the child psychologist. Life with Vittoria has been hard, she’s not even been allowed to experience the wonder of the days that Davide and I lived through. I know I must not live my pain through her, I must not look sad or desperate. His serenity depends on mine.
“Davide – as much suffering as his death causes me – must not become a taboo or something to hide away from, a void not to be spoken of. She has understood that he will not be coming back, but we talk about him in an imaginary place where he is happy. Now I have to try and create the wings with which Vittoria can fly in life. We must not be swallowed by this emptiness.
“I do not know what gave me the strength to find the clarity with which I immediately faced up to my only priority: my daughter.
“If I think about it now, especially when the people close to me describe it to me, I realise that there were alternating moments of total emptiness – lost in pain when Vittoria was not there – and magically I always came back to being my old self but only when I was with her. I was stifling the pain so that the harmony that always existed between the three of us could continue, even if unfortunately Davide would never be there again. This is why I accompanied my daughter to school, keeping the daily routine that we always had.
“Not even the most tragic thing that could’ve ever happened to me allowed me to destabilise her, now matter how much it had annihilated me. Soon after, I went to the child psychologist, because I felt that that kind of support was needed. From the first moment it was clear to me that Vittoria should never have to bear the burden of the suffering of others, let alone of mine.
“I know that everyone wants to do right for their children, but I do not know how I had the strength not to allow her to suffer, but avoiding this is essential for me. And however hard it has been - and still is - I continue to do so. My tears will be there, and I will share them with her, but I will have to make her understand that they are not tears of despair.
“They are tears of emotion, that emotion that only the most beautiful songs can create. Together we will be able to fill the emptiness that has been created by filling it with all the memories and images of us together in the short but intense period that we shared. This I think is the only gift and the only way I can help her in the future: to be there when she needs it, the safe haven where she can always come back and be calm, but leaving her free to live like all her peers.
“Now when I fall asleep in the evening, on seeing her so serene I feel that I am doing the right thing. It is not a duty. It is the promise that I make to myself: to be able to still amaze myself in life and be surprised by emotions. I want this for me and, consequently, for Vittoria because I know it’s also going to be the best thing for her.”
After bravely discussing her relationship with her daughter, Francesca moved on to talk about the first time she met Davide.
"It was one evening in September 2013. At a party he stopped me to ask me what Vietnam was like, where I had been a competitor on the television program" Beijing Express. It seemed like a chat-up line, but life and our travels afterwards would prove that it was sincere. That night he text me for the first time, he had my number given to him by a friend. He would text me every day me for a month afterwards.
"I have all our chats from that time printed out. I have not got the faintest idea why I decided to do this! Although I knew that over time they could be deleted, I really did not have a reason to print them.
“Yet I had this thought and I consumed two coils of ink from my father's printer. Today, if I think that my daughter can read the messages with all the ways her father tried to charm me, I can smile. This is how our love started. Then he moved from Cagliari to Roma. In his constant planning he had already decided that I would definitely move with him to Rome.
“He knew of the acting studios in the capital, but he also knew that, for work, I wanted to keep my backup in Milan. In the end he won. We were different and complementary. His life was regular, like a horizontal line. Mine was a rhapsody, full of rise and fall, in my work just as in my mood. Our passion was travel. We went to India, Nepal, Peru, Japan. We were like two teenagers on trains and buses, full of discovery and wonder. Before traveling to Peru, I discovered I was pregnant.
“After a check-up there they told us that we had lost our baby but instead, back in Rome, we discovered that she was still there. He then convinced himself that she was a girl. "If the baby is that strong, it can only be a girl,” he said. And that's why we decided to call her Vittoria. We had a beautiful life together. I just cannot accept that he went away like this.”
