Carlos Humberto Caszely cannot find a way back from sadness, following the death of his wife María de los Ángeles. “I was immensely happy from the time I was born to February 22,” he says.
With sadness stuck in his soul. The legendary scorer of La Roja and Colo Colo, Carlos Humberto Caszely, He is still too far from overcoming the departure last February of his life partner: María de los Ángeles Guerra.
His wife of five decades was taken away by cancer that she had already beaten once. The hardest blow in the existence of the ‘King of the square meter’, 72 years old.
In a frank dialogue with El Mercurio, the “Chino” expressed his pain. “I wake up and I don’t know what to do (…) I was selfish. I didn’t want him to go. My kids processed it better than me., regarding three months before they were assuming what was coming. But not me. I was not prepared,” she declared.
“The death of my parents was painful, but this does not compare, it’s a thousand times more painful (…) I was immensely happy from the time I was born to February 22”, he added.
Grief overwhelms the World Cup player in Germany 1974 and Spain 1982. During the talk, tears run down his face and he points with his head down “I have a black heart”, admitting that for the first time in his life he has visited a psychiatrist and taken sleeping pills.
Despite the therapy, Caszely is clear that “anguish can pass, grief never” and adds that the condolences, despite thanking them, today are of no use in his spirit. “It is that the pain is so much that it is useless. It doesn’t calm, it doesn’t soothe,” she said.
One of the few things that has made him ‘click’ in this period of mourning, which seems eternal, was a phrase from “a man with gray hair”, as the former gunner says. He “came up and hugged me: ‘You haven’t thought if it had been the other way around, that it would have been you who left and not her. Would you like to see her suffer as you are suffering?’”.
“’Obviously not,’ I replied…It has been one of the few things that has shaken me. I never knew who she was. I don’t know her name. I never saw him once more,” she noted.
A 2022 that Caszely will never forget, mainly due to the departure of his partner and people he greatly appreciated in football. “The sorrow is very great. I don’t know, this year it was… first María de los Ángeles, then Leonel Sánchez, Marco Cornez and the doctor from Colo Colo Álvaro Reyes… it is like being in the first row, we are in the first row”, he indicated.
The white idol cannot find a way back from sadness, despite always being in contact with his four children. A two-meter tree that they planted in a park (a liquidambar) is the meeting place today between Caszely and his wife. There she goes for a walk alone, coffee in hand, lit cigarette and listening to songs on her cell phone that remind her of her.
