“A tireless fighter“That's how it was Slimfrom the beginning, since he came to Spain from his native Tunisiauntil the end, until he died at the age of 47 as a result of the damage of last October 29. This is how his wife remembered him this Wednesday, Naiara Chuliaand ehe State funeral for the 237 victims that the Dana took throughout Spain. She has written a long love letter to her husband, the love of her life, her best friend, which she has read. Talking about him in the present tense.
Slim and Naiara met 25 years ago in Mallorca and had two children. In the middle, as in every life, “projects that went well and others not so well.” “Then we moved to Valencia, my land, and we bought the housewhich little by little we were renovating ourselves,” he said. A house that, during this year and despite being emptier, Naiara has continued renovating as she believes, or knows, that Slim would like.
“I thought: I'm so happy it scares me, but I didn't tell you.”
A few days before the tragedy, he recalled, the two of them were painting. “I thought: I'm so happy it scares me, but I didn't tell you.“he added, always addressing his partner. From his birthday, which they celebrated the Saturday before the dana, he still keeps a little meringue frozen. He doesn't want to eat it, but he doesn't want to throw it away either.
“And when everything was going well, one day you leave home and don't come back… if I had known that the conversation on the 29th was the last, I would have told you so many things…” Chuliá continued. But she didn't tell them, and when she arrived home with her children in the car, when she already knew that there were flooded streets and roads, she prayed “to the universe” that her husband had anticipated his arrival. But it wasn't like that. “The house was freezing, I had a hunch: something was not right,” he recalled.
“No sleep or nightmares”
Family, friends, mobilized to find Slim. “And we found you, and that day my world turned upside down“, he acknowledged. The hardest moment of his life came right after: telling his children that their father would no longer return. To move forward, Naiara said, he has relied on the people who love him. “They told me so many times that we were not alone,” he thanked.
The duel is long and dark. “No sleep or nightmares” in which she tried to save her husband, but when she was about to succeed, she woke up. “And another nightmare began but this time she woke up,” she said.
237 stories
“You enter a wheel because you have two small children and the obligation to get ahead“, Naiara acknowledged, who showed during the reading a great serenity. “I tell my story but here, in this room there are 237 stories with names and surnames, with broken families and broken dreams,” he added. It has also had a special memory for families who have lost more than one loved one “in addition to children with their whole lives ahead of them.” Their pain, he said, only they can know.
Now, it's time to move forward, for your children.. “It is hard to educate away from pain, anger and sadness when you feel like that,” he acknowledged. She knows that her husband, her great love, would not allow her to give up or give up. “I don't want to feel bad when I laugh or guilty for what happened to you.”.
“Every day I talk to you”
And, at the end of his love letter, a farewell that is not, because his conversation is infinite. “TEvery day I talk to you, the love of my life, my confidant“, she acknowledged. Naiara, a mother, will never raise her children alone. “I do it with you, thinking like you would do it“, he said about Slim. “You are and will be invincible; “You fought like a titan, I know,” he concluded, as he did since he met him, like “all his life.”
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