Pascal Praud: The world after the death of my father

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The Saint-Similien church in Nantes is awaiting its second bell tower, which the National Assembly voted for in 1902 before the law of 1905 separated Church and State. Farewell bell tower! My parents united their destiny there on January 31, 1959. 24,013 days later, my mother chose this church for her husband’s funeral. She is tested. She also thinks that she will one day find the man of her life. Catholics believe in the communion of saints, a bridge between the living and the dead, as if we all depended on each other. I share this hope, on even days.

François Truffaut recounts in The Green Room (1978) the fate of a man so in love with his wife that he devotes his existence to her when she dies suddenly: “You will see that the dead belong to us if we accept that we belong to them. Believe me, our dead can continue to live. » Truffaut imagined the communion of saints. I remember a sentence from Léon Bloy: “There is only one sadness, that of not being saints. »

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Death brings closer

“Death brings closer”told me a friend to whom I reported the messages I received after Heaven welcomed my father. Friends text. Words console. People encountered here and there show their affection. Most of the time I answered that my father was 90 years old, that he had a stroke twenty years ago, that I believed “be prepared” as they say a little stupidly and I was wrong.

This expression “be prepared” made my correspondents react. Some sent a message back. “We are never prepared”was the almost unanimous response. So-and-so regretted “for not having told his father everything”. Another wrote that his father was waiting until he returned from a trip to die. “Transmit”is the last word this father said to his son. “Life passed so quickly”were the final words of another father to another son. I would like to publish these telegrams. We are all clones of little Marcel, all shipwrecked by lost time, all filled with living memories. “Are you an orphan? Well you can write now! »said an editor to a young woman when he learned that her parents were no longer in this world. The young woman has not forgotten. She in turn gave this advice. “I saw myself after Mom died thirty years ago, a century ago”texted a septuagenarian who had read the JDD.

Yes, death draws near

I received a confession from a colleague: “When he left, I thought about stopping television because I understood that it was for him that I was there every evening. » I had opened Pandora’s box. Yes, death brings you closer. Everyone talked about their lives without him. “The dead are not dead since we live and they are what is most alive in us. This paradox is one of Auguste Comte’s deepest thoughts. » This message came when I was alone in the funeral home where my father was buried. We were both. Like before. For the first time, I saw a dead person. I hesitated to take a photo. I read a few more messages. I put my smartphone back in my pocket.

In the name of the father

As time passes, we live in a green room. A reader quoted Victor Hugo: “You are no longer where you were, but you are everywhere I am. » Another said the same thing: “Every day I think of him… and I know that he guides me. » Paul Éluard, Alexandre Dumas, Marcel Pagnol came to the rescue to portray the mourners. Finally there is this man who evokes “the supreme test” what is the death of a father for a son. “And the beginning of a definitive solitude of which no one, alas, has any idea. » He adds: “You will see that. Between you and you. And maybe you won’t talk to anyone about it again. This is how men suffer, cry and live again. »

I like to hear secrets

These words extend a passage from Yogathe story that Emmanuel Carrère published in 2020 at POL Carrère met an old priest who spent fifty years listening to men and women in the secrecy of the confessional: “I learned two things. The first is that people are much more unhappy than we think. The second is that there are no grown-ups. »

It seems that it is bad manners to talk about oneself. What a shame! I like hearing secrets. I read the diaries of novelists. I listened to “Allô Macha” on France Inter when I was a student, revising my lessons at night. I am a fan of Mireille Dumas. I like when people talk about themselves. As long as they don’t cheat. Let it not be Proust’s questionnaire! You know this stylistic exercise which oscillates between falsity and farce: “What is your main fault? Honesty! » My eye! Can you imagine someone who would respond: “My main fault? Indifference! I don’t care about anything! »

Front line

At church this Tuesday, Lou spoke. Her tears shook the audience. In front of this orchestra of white hair, I retraced a life that some people had known for 85 years: the journey of a child from Nantes. A mass booklet accompanied the farewell ceremony. My mother had chosen a photo of my father to illustrate the cover page. We see Morgane and Tiphaine playing shaving their grandfather. They are four and five years old. They smeared his face with white foam. It’s summer. My father is shirtless. His skin is olive. The girls hold a small spoon in their hand as a razor. This photo says it all.

She also says that I am on the front line according to an expression I have heard in recent days. On the front line, yes. Implied: I’m next.

The death of my father made the present distant, the current events paltry

This idea delights me. May Heaven not upset the order of departures.

My father’s death made the present seem distant and current events seem insignificant. Israel, Gaza, Trump, Valencia, Mazan etc. what’s the point? “It’s a story told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and means nothing. »

My father is no more. And yet the world is there. And here I am.