On the last Tuesday of September, I flew overnight to Paris, summoned by three people with whom I had lived for a year two decades ago. Their mother, almost 80, had died from complications of bladder cancer. She had become a second mother to me. In a maternal way, she instructed me in the ways of the European world. She once explained the difference between French, Spanish and Italian men thusly: “When a lady attracts the attention of a Frenchman, he will knock on the door of house. If she refuses him, he will go away. A Spaniard will knock on the same door, meet the same refusal and come around to the window to knock again. The Italian, by contrast, will do both of those steps, and then come down the chimney!”
Without fail, she made me feel at home in a foreign land, inviting me to her table, her country home, her children’s weddings. She could exude grace and refinement one moment, and be doubled-over in silent laughter at sophomoric impressions of French celebrities the next. In a word, she was extraordinary.
For years, I had lived in fear she would die and no one would call, leaving me to discover her passing after she was in the ground. I dreamt about hearing the news too late, missing the chance to say goodbye to someone who had shepherded me into a new, French life. In that dark space of my imagination, I felt the waves of regret ripple in my marrow.
Luckily, the youngest son, Henry, contacted me the day she died. In some way, my trip was a victory for my mental health. Of all the unfinished business I may have in France — I have lived there all told for more than four of my adult years, and, like here, there are some things that I started there but have not yet completed — I was present to tie up the most important loose thread. I paid my final respects to someone who gave me way more than I could ever give back. Naturally, it came at a time that was both terribly inconvenient and expensive. But sunrises and sunsets will put a balm on those temporary trivialities. As I did the math with my wife, we concluded that the money saved by not going would never be able to quiet the nagging eternal voice in my head that would whisper, “You should have gone to the funeral. How could you have missed it?”
The oldest son, Antoine, picked me up at the airport and, over a 45-minute drive, explained how she had deteriorated. At one point during his telling, he said, “I will never forget her big blue eyes, so full of fear.” At another, he said he answered her phone call and all she said was, “Au secours.” Help.
It struck me that I had never before seen a Frenchman cry.
I joined the family to see the funeral workers put the cap on the casket. Looking down on her embalmed face, I croaked out a meager, “Au revoir, Madame. Merci.”
From that moment on, the tide turned. The family, practicing Catholics, was quite convinced that Maman was up above, and our terrestrial matters were no doubt amusing her. They seemed lightened, ready to move past the grief and instead toward the lighter side of life.
So when the daughter, Valentine, called Antoine to tell him that there was a little issue at the cemetery, I braced for the funny. From his speaker phone in the car, Antoine called the funeral home. A voice answered and Antoine politely said, “Bonjour, Madame,” at which point the voice on the other end gently but firmly said, “Actually, it is Monsieur.” We were off to a good start. “There is un petit probleme,” the man continued. “There does not appear to be a place for your mother in the family tomb.”
One of the most challenging and surreal aspects of a foreign language is that you don’t trust your comprehension the same way you do in your native tongue. No space for a body at the cemetery? Clearly I had missed something.
Except I hadn’t. The family tomb was indeed full, and they would need to “do a reduction” in order to make a place for Madame. Almost all of the space was taken up by distant ancestors who had been buried in the 1860s. The only 20th century addition to the tomb was, naturally, Madame’s husband, Antoine’s father, who had died in 1989. Because he was on top, it would be simplest to, ahem, consolidate his remains. Antonie, slightly incredulous, said, “Surely you don’t mean that in order to make room for my mother you are going to remove my father?”
Surely the man did mean that. Over the next six hours, I witnessed a family — children, cousins, aunts and uncles — doing combat with the juggernaut that is the French bureaucracy. As 50 people milled about the graveyard in the town of Versailles, a clutch of family members debated with the authorities, including the mayor’s office, the cemetery director and the funeral home. At last, they decided that, instead of lowering Madame into her right spot, they would put her in the Caveau provisoire, or temporary tomb, while they resolved the administrative conundrum. Antoine, laughing, conceded he never knew such a thing existed. After a prolonged conversation with the cemetery’s top brass, he confided that they had reached what sounded like a good solution that would leave his father and mother together for eternity. He also confided that the solution was going to cost him a 100 euro note, slid discretely into the man’s hands.
Later, at Antoine’s house, several dozen of us gathered to remember, drink wine and eat foie gras, and to laugh. It was reassuring to realize that, even though I am frequently at a total loss when trying to understand French culture, the common bonds of humanity were all I needed to be at ease with the crowd. French people, it seems, grieve the same as we do, with tears, with memories, with hugs of consolation, with food and beverage and jokes.
A lot got packed into my four days in Paris. I touched most every note on the emotional register and made new friendships while solidifying old ones. It was a 96-hour tornado of existence, public and intensely private at the same time. It will take time to process.
When I returned home, the Upper Valley community seemed to understand. People — friends, acquaintances, hockey players, clients — expressed their condolences. Not in a perfunctory manner, but with eye contact and gentle questions. It occurred to me that this type of genuine kindness, extended to me over the death of a woman that no one here even knew existed, is but one more example of why we choose to live here.
My French mother would have fit right in.
Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.