Michela Murgia, “who made sure that there was no air of death in her house.” Her husband Lorenzo Terenzi talks about her

Although a month has passed since his disappearance, Michela Murgia continues to live not only thanks to the readers who are rediscovering her books, bringing them back to the top of the rankings of best-selling novels, but also to the queer family that Michela chose for herself and which she described with love and an open heart in the issue of Vanity Fair which he directed in June, a month and a half before he died. Now he is the husband Lorenzo Terenzi to open the doors of this house on the ground floor, al border between Trastevere and Ostiensefor the first time, telling a Republic what we were able to imagine thanks to the stories of Michela Murgia herself and the photos posted from time to time on social media. In the last days of her life, explains Terenzi, Michela stayed in the bedroom to be lulled by the voices of her friends and her close children because going down to the garden cost her too much effort: «Some of us took turns going there to keep her some company and she was so happy to know we were all out there,” says Lorenzo.

The house, which preserves an incredible silence despite overlooking a popular street, is exactly as Michela Murgia hoped it would be: with a large walk-in closet still full of her colorful shirts as well as her Dior wedding dress, kept inside a cellophane case so that it doesn’t get ruined, and with a garden in which she loved to swing on her trusty swing chair where she spent her days reading, chat and laugh. She although she failed to turn the large window overlooking the trees into a Korean-style alcove, There is still so much of her in this house. From the library with the photos, volumes and memorabilia that she has collected around the world to the garden in which Michela Murgia and Lorenzo celebrated their queer family on July 23rd, with interchangeable and genderless white dresses exactly as she wanted. «Michela is perhaps the greatest friend I’ve ever had»says Lorenzo, the friend whom the writer asked to take charge of her inheritance, together with the others.

The work to make his refuge warm and welcoming was joint. It involved Claudia, the mother of Raphael, one of the four children of soul of the author, who as an architect took care of everything, a Roberto Saviano, who got by with the assembly work – «Michi made him assemble the three spice racks, taking him and making fun of us» -. However, it was not Michela who prepared the first dinner at home, who was very good at cooking, but her friend Chiara Valerio: a risotto for everyone. «It was a Sunday, Michela wanted to spend the first evening at home at all costs. Chiara assembled the chairs, my sister and my niece, passing through Rome, gave us a hand. And so does everyone else. When evening came and the torches and colored lights that some friends had brought were lit, I asked them to pinch me: we had really succeeded. It’s been a long time since Michela was late, he was very late that evening.” «It seems incredible, yet never, not even once, has there been an air of death in this house. Here we laughed, we were happy, Michela was happy. We focused on the present. She taught us how to stay”, comments Terenzi, talking about when Michela Murgia dictated his last book to his soul son Riccardo, getting angry because she wasn’t fast enough to beat, and when Francesco Leone, another soul child and opera singer, sang church songs in the garden with her as his choir. «Now I talk to her, not always, but often. She is still here with us. I find it in the eyes of others. Each of us has a piece of her.”