Category: france

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YOLO

Dear Jean,

I moved to this corner of France about 16 years ago with two French friends from the World Bank, Pierre Mersier and Claude Carlier. Pierre died in December and last Thursday afternoon I learned that Claude, after many years of struggling with Parkinson’s disease had died in his sleep during the previous night. So I went to his home in the next village about 5 PM. 

Claude’s wife Violette is 84 years old, very deaf and very blind. The housekeeper had come to the house at 9 AM and as usual found them both in bed, one sleeping and the other not. She called their doctor, their daughter in Brussels and the funeral home. As I sat on the couch with Violette she would sometimes ask me where is Claude. When the two guys from the funeral home showed up about 6:15 I kept her busy in the kitchen while they removed Claude’s body. The housekeeper prepared a light supper for us and left. Violette and I sat on opposite sides of the table, she ate and I tapped my fork on the plate, I had no appetite and anyway she cannot see. We had some very bizarre exchanges, me shouting replies across the table to her questions about where was Claude. 

At some point she would start confusing me with Claude insisting that I eat everything on my plate. Then according to her habits at around 7:30 she closed all the shutters, locked the doors, turned out all the lights but one and announced it was time to go to bed. I persuaded her not to turn on the alarm as I would need to go to the bathroom. I turned on some lights and settled in on the couch to read and stay with her until her daughter arrived in the morning. 

They keep the house extremely hot 28C according to a thermometer on the wall, and I was reluctant to fiddle with the thermostat so I spent the night in my underwear drinking a glass of very old wine from bottle I found in the kitchen. I looked everywhere but could not find his whiskey. Somewhere in the early hours I remembered that their daughter mentioned to me she had a camera installed in the living room so she could see on her smart phone how her parents were doing, so I stopped scratching where it itched. Their daughter arrived around 0830 the next morning.

Today I went to the funeral home to sit with Claude for 5 minutes in the dimly lit small room where he was laid out, and to reflect on his very interesting life. He was born in Vietnam in 1934 during the French colonial era. When he grew up he joined the French merchant marine, jumped ship in Tahiti, found a job there in a phosphate mine and met and married Violette. A few years later when the mine was exhausted his parents, still living in Saigon bought them the tickets and they travelled to Vietnam with their two young sons on a flying boat, flying only during the day, landing on the water as night approached and taking a boat to their hotel. He found work on a rubber plantation outside Saigon and eventually ended up the plantation director. He told me it was complicated as he had to deal with US army during the day and the Viet Cong communists during the night.

I abruptly stopped my daydreaming when much to my surprise the noisy refrigeration unit built into the underside of his bed started up and scared the sh.t out of me.

His funeral service was at 10:30 on Tuesday in a small Catholic church in another nearby village. 


You Only Live Once, But if You Do it Right It Is Enough.

Best wishes from the last man standing.

John
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Found Things

One day I was on the DC metro heading to work at the World Bank, gradually the crowd thinned out and revealed a young lady maybe in her late 20s sitting in an isle seat and fussing over her small baby in a stroller alongside her. Mom was wearing an expensive lime green track suit purchased on the demonstrated presumption that conspicious, consumption trumps taste. She complimented this with a striking multicolored, gloosy pair of what must have been designer sneakers. She would lovingly fuss over the baby, pulling up it’s blanket, adjusting it’s little hat, touching it’s face and each time she finished she would fully insert her thumb in her own mouth and gaze admiringly at the baby. There was no eye contact. Everyone pretended not to notice.
My friend here at work, Muriel hails from Dundee and has arrived at retirement with her accent and sense of humour intact. She and her husband have worked all over; Canada, Africa and the US. They have bought a small farm out in Standardsville in Virginia and she sometimes brings back tales of the life bucolic.
Like the story of her 88 year neighbour, a widower of 13 years who having survived prostate cancer decided to make an honest woman of girlfriend who is a mere 62, and stopped by to see Murial’s husband to check if, for his honeymoon he should be purchasing Viagara or Cialis or would one suffice. He wastold that one should be adequate and off the happy couple went for a weekend at a luxury resort arranged for free by another friend, a travel agent.
The only risk, which they would have to resist, was that the free package was provided by a company that would require them to attend a dinner and sales session trying to sell them a condo on the golf course. The gentleman, being something of a skinflint, over indulged with the free drinks over dinner and had to be put to bed on Saturday night, was hors combat on Sunday and on their return the bride reports that regrettably the weekend was conjugally unconsummated.
On Sat. 25 April I was on my way to work and exiting Farragut North metro station was confronted by the sight of about 20 young people on the sidewalk with masks pulled up over their faces and carrying signs protesting the annual World Bank meeting of the worlds Ministers of Finance. The kids were surrounded by police on motor bikes and in cars. Off to the side were some older people with brightly coloured caps and carying notebooks.
I stopped and asked what their role was and they told me they were with a group of retired lawyers working with Global Justice Action the group organizing the protest and acting as witnesses to the demonstration. As I walked the 10 blocks towards the Bank building, I work in on 19th and I streets, I noticed police helicopters overhead and another group of demonstrators with the police again trying to isolate them. This time in cars, on motorbikes, bicycles and one on a Segway. One of the kids was carrying a sign saying “Capitalist meeting in progress, Keep Quiet please.”
The younger policemen were nervous and one got out of his car holding a can of mace at his side and shaking it, so I walked over and said hello, it’s a nice day. He did not say hello. As I got close the Bank main complex there were barriers around the building and you started to see the young muscular guys with short haircuts, flesh coloured ear pieces talking into their wrists. And standing waiting to get through the barrier were a line of waiters and waitresses each with their white shirt and dark jacket on a coat hangar, all of them from Centra America, waiting to serve expensive food to international misinters of finance here to solve the problems of the world’s poor.
Another morning I was coming up the escalator from the same station and heard this guy playing a long improvised solo to a familiar song. Different people play there on different days, the Chinese guy that sometimes plays the one string violin has not been around this year.
But todays guy has been playing there on and off for many years, a big guy who plays an amplified guitar well, sings and has his dreadlocks up in one of those Jamiacan style knitted hats. As I arrived at the top he started singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and he did it well so I stopped listened for a while. I decided to give him some money but only had a $5 bill so signed that I was putting in the 5 and taking out 3 and he said between musical phrases, cool I work on the honor system. I said I love the sound of Cohen in the morning and he said the dude is coming to town to perform and as I walked away he sang the next line “maybe theres a god above, and all I ever learned from love, was to shoot at someone who outdrew you.
Amen

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Building a Garage & And So It Goes

Roger

The following is the tail end of a periodic letter I would send to my son Patrick’s godmother Della in Langley. About a year ago she learned she had melanoma and this was my poor attempt, along with some phone calls to make her smile for a moment. 

Building a Garage. 

On Saturday 29 June, as I do most weekends recently,  I went next door to help my neighbour Jean Noel with his year long project of building a garage. He gets up on the scaffolding (l’echafaudage, you learn a new word every day). I  fill the bucket with cement and Jean Noel pulls it up on a rope. I was walking into the garage with a full bucket thinking I should get a fresh bag of cement when I put my right foot on a loose piece of wood and fell like I had been shot. Jean Noel scrambled down and tried to pull me to my feet, but you probably remember the experience where your body is telling you “stay exactly where you are for a while until I figure out how bad things are.” 

After a bit he pulled me up, we finished the pour we were doing and I stumbled off home. I had a painful shower and then spent Sunday to Wednesday with my foot soaking in a bucket of water and ice. As that was not working on Wednesday  I drove the trusty old 2CV to the doctors office in Montolieu, he pushed my ankle in a few places and told me, after he had called them, to go to the emergency room in the Clinic de Montreal in Carcassonne. I told him I would drive there right away. He said no your ankle is broken and get a friend to take me as I would probably not be able to drive back. 

I drove home, note driving up hill is less painful than down as no braking is required, called my friend Pierre and that afternoon he drive me to the Clinic. With the system in France you go in, hand them your medical card, they stick it in the computer reader and that takes care of the paperwork. They put me in a room, a doctor took a look, poked my ankle and sent me for an x-ray.  About 15 minutes later he came back to the room, snapped the x-ray in the light frame, told me my ankle was broken and asked how I had managed, even using a cane, to get around on it for 4 days. My answer, probably because I am stupid. He wrote me a number of prescriptions, told me to make an appointment with a specialist for the next week,  and then two nurses came in and started putting a cast on my leg. 

I asked them to make it as small as possible so I could drive. They thought this was funny and told me that if you have a cast your car insurance is not valid. Pierre took me home, stopping on the way to pick up my prescriptions. These included painkillers, and to my surprise a bunch of hypodermic needles charged with medicine. It was then that I learned that in order to prevent blood clots a nurse would be coming to my house every morning to give me an injection, plus a blood test twice a week to check my platelet count. 

The next day, Thursday the nurse arrived just after breakfast, introduced herself and used a lot of French medical phrases unknown to me and indicated it was time for the the blood draw. That done, it takes the edge of your second cup of coffee, she suggested we do the injection. I proffered my right arm she shook her head and indicated my nether regions. So I struggled to my feet, turned my back, undid my belt, drew down my clean underwear, mother had warned me,  and offered her my somewhat tense right Irish cheek. A bit of painless time went by so I looked over my should to see a puzzled nurse with a hypodermic in her hand. In response to my inquiry about her presumed preference for left cheeks she replied that in France they give injections in the stomach. So pivoting manfully I presented my stomach and she grasped a handful of my ample avoir dupois and stuck a needle in it. There is a first time for everything and I now have a third alternative for the popular question are you cold or were you born that way. 

On Thursday 10 July Pierre took me back to the Clinic to see the specialist.  He cut off the temporary cast, looked at the x-ray and cheerfully advised me I would probably need a total of 45 days with  my right leg in a cast. I told him, hopefully that this was not possible as I had only enough syringes for 30 morning injections in my stomach. He smiled and  told me not to worry, call my doctor and he would order me up another 15 which the nurse would pick up for me at the pharmacy. 

Stuck at home after four weeks learning to walk on a couple of crutches that reach to your elbows and fall immediately to the floor each time you rest them against something,  I have had lots of time to very slowly do some of the things I used to do and to consider the future and realize what limited mobility does to our presumed entitlement to a normal life. 

Last week I received this. 

Hi John. 

I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but Della died at 3:15 this afternoon.  The end was gentle and comfortable, although I could hear her silently telling us to get the hell out of her room and have a glass of wine and stop scaring her with our silly long faces.  She’d slipped into unconsciousness two days ago, but her voice was still inside our heads. 

Perry’s at the Hospice with Chris, the other Musketeer, making arrangements, but I’m sure she’d have wanted you to have a better farewell party drinking wine and eating moules on the ramparts of Carcassonne – all the while resting that incalcitrant ankle. 

I’ll write more later.  Della heard your last letter and she responded with a smile when I told her you sent your love. 

Take care.        Rene 

I had the cast removed today, have another week of injections and am told to behave cautiously when walking outside. 

I can hear the sound of Della’s voice n my head but cannot remember what we were talking about, and somtimes my eyes fill with tears. 


Be well. 

John
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Observations on Elections and Other Events in a Small French Village

John, Sam,
Last Sunday they held municipal elections to pick a slate of “aldermen” for every town and village in France. If there is more than one slate representing e.g. left and right wings then the final slate can be a mixture of candidates. The slate of winners then nominates one of themselves as mayor. All very democratic. In our small village the former mayor did not run for re-election.
A few days before Sunday’s election the new mayor’s 59 year old wife unexpectedly had a heart attack and died. That day her brother came to the door, in tears, of my friend Jean Michel to bring him the news and collapsed in Jean Michel’s arms. Jean Michel turned white, went to the kitchen and ate some sugar to recover from the shock while his wife Josy comforted their friend
On Monday morning Josy and I went out for our daily walk and in passing we saw the gate to the mayor’s home was open and someone was working in the garden. So we went in to commiserate with and congratulate the new mayor, and found it was in fact his brother in law doing the work. He had built a very nice small fence around a large tree and planted flowers inside it in remembrance of his sister.
As we were commiserating with him we noticed that he was raking her ashes into the soil.
He told us the his brother in law and now the successful new mayor was inside resting.
The trouble is we think we have time.
I hope this find you in good health and that all is well in Perth
You know you are dead when the bills stop coming in.
John