“It is the Lord who decides. God sees and God provides.”
Emma Bozzini is born in 1921, in Corzoneso, in the Blenio Valley, on a day of heavy snow. Her father, mobilised for military service in Airolo, is not present, and when he learns that it is a girl, he rejoices: «We need one,» he says. A boy was born shortly before, and a second one will follow two years later. She grows up in a modest farming family, to the rhythm of fieldwork and caring for the animals. She has few memories of her childhood, but she remembers very clearly the moment she decides to leave home. Despite her mother’s hesitation, she goes at age 15 to German-speaking Switzerland, because there is very little work in Ticino: «I needed money more than to stay at home.»
Emma Bozzini first works in a spinning mill in Zug and lives in the boarding house of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in Menzingen, where she shares a room with 24 other young women. «It was a hard period» she says, but the family needs the income. Her life is paced by the factory during the week and by work for the nuns on weekends: «We could only sew, wash and do other tasks» she says. She remembers very well the blue uniform, the precious coat reserved for major celebrations, and especially an outing to Einsiedeln where she buys her first earrings.
From age 16 to 22, Emma Bozzini does not return home and no member of her family comes to visit her. She then works for a few years in a clinic in Baar, run by nuns. In 1952, her mother’s illness calls her back home. The doctor suggests a three-month Samaritan course so she can care for her mother: She then discovers a taste for caregiving, but has to give up continuing the training: «Daddy needed me.» Single at 37, Emma Bozzini takes care of her parents, takes charge of the farm, the vegetable garden and the animals, accompanies her father until he is 92, and renovates the house with her own hands. In winter, she works as a nursing assistant at the clinic in Faido. Being a farmer, she says, does not allow one to save money and is hard work: «The great responsibility of the house, the brothers, the stable and the vegetable garden. Everything was on my shoulders.»
At the age of 104 years, of which 14 spent in a retirement home, Emma Bozzini prefers the solitude of her room: her geraniums on the balcony and the photographs on her bedside table keep her company. Her hands, worn from work, no longer allow her to knit. «At 100, you are never really well, there is always something,» she says. She cannot explain her longevity: «It is the Lord who decides. God sees and God provides.»