On Wednesday, I found a little note from my girlfriend on the kitchen island, a little note that I read in the middle of the night: I know yesterday was emotional for you…
Published at 5:00 a.m.
The day before, Tuesday, was the anniversary of my father’s death, gone too young, too soon, from cancer.
A lifetime ago, I recounted his death in The Pressa beautiful death, if a “beautiful” death is possible at 53. But the last moments were beautiful, I can’t deny it.
I in turn left a little note for my girlfriend: No, my love, after 24 years it is never the calendar that triggers my sadness…
Never Christmas, never his birthday, never Father’s Day, no, sadness always arises like the deer in the groves when you come close to hitting him in a tank: you never saw it coming.
If I hear the word “Fabreville”, if I see a scene of father and son in the tank after a hockey match, if I see an old gray pick-up like his: there, sometimes but not always, the memory sometimes grabs me by the guts and then, yes, sometimes, my eyes are flooded….
But Tuesday?
Tuesday, not.
Every November 19, however, the film of the last moments plays in my head when I see the reminder in my phone, Death of dad.
His wife whom I went to look for in the middle of the night on the advice of my mother who felt that the end was here, very close (she was right). My father leaving, surrounded by his wife, his ex-wife (my mother) and his oldest (me), the tragic beauty of this painting. The rest of the family arriving silently at the hospital, the hugs with my uncles, with my aunts.
And the little snow that fell in the night in Vimont when I left the hospital.
I always wondered what this little snow meant…
I tell you this because we look for the signs when a loved one dies. We look for them that day and we look for them for the thousands of days that follow.
As my friend Pierre always tells me about these signs that life sends us, quoting the Beatles: “Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see”. ‘we see…
My friend Pierre also lost his father too young. Sometimes all it takes is seeing a fire truck to be shaken, to hear the voice of his father speaking to him, a father who was, you guessed it, a firefighter.
And the first one I called when I knew my father was going to die, at the beginning of 2000, was Pierre: I didn’t know anyone who had lost their father too early, like I was going to lose mine. Since then, the death of our fathers has sparked a thousand discussions between us.
I think about it: Tuesday, I had dinner with Pierre, an extremely rare dinner because he no longer lives in the country. Is it a sign, Pete, that we had dinner together on Tuesday?
After dinner with Pierre, I went to pick up my son from his mother’s house while listening to a song on repeat, This lifeby Clara Luciani who released a new album. Since the day before, Monday, I was hypnotized by this song, the music more than the words…
I arrived and of course my son had forgotten his license, he went back to the apartment to get it, apologizing with a bright, embarrassed smile under his limp mustache.
(Yes, the heir has a mustache.)
We went up Saint-Laurent, turned left on Laurier, we got lost in Outremont, Look in the mirror, there’s a cyclist ; right on Côte-Sainte-Catherine towards Sainte-Justine hospital, right on Decelles, Slow down, there’s a car coming out of the parking lotreturn by Van Horne…
An hour like this, Tuesday. My God thatlearn driving is cognitively stressful, which is why we are so hesitant behind the wheel at first. Everything seems terrifying to us. Tell you how I didn’t have time to think about my father…
It was the next day that it hit me: my father who is sitting in the passenger seat, in 1990, I am behind the wheel of his gray pick-up in a parking lot in Laval which no longer exists, I I was so terrified, so hesitant.
It’s one of my most vivid memories of him.
I was then the age of my son today, roughly.
A sign that I went to watch him drive on Tuesday?
I know, I know, Pete, I can hear you from here: Living is easy with eyes closed…
I told you I didn’t think about my dad on Tuesday, but I’m sure he was sitting in the backseat that afternoon, laughing at how nervous his son was and how excited he was of this grandson he never knew.
(Yes, my eyes flooded while writing the last paragraph.)
He left too soon for us to really make peace with certain matters during his lifetime. But the years passed, I too became a father and I ended up understanding certain things, perhaps the essential, I understood that he did his best and above all that this possibility was already immense to love…
And I ended up declaring my peace with him, unilaterally.
Today, like him no doubt, I am doing my best.
I don’t succeed all the time.
But I always try very hard.
Like him, like so many fathers.
I was talking to you about Clara Luciani’s song, the beat that bewitched me on This life.
At the gym, out of breath on the stair machine – because you have to sweat to fend off death a little – I lingered on the words of This lifeI said to myself, if I listen to it at this point, I should go and read them carefully, the lyrics… It’s a love song for her daughter who has just been born, Clara talks about her life which is ” even better” since she came across her daughter’s eyes, how she immediately fell for her dirty blue eyes, how life is not always la dolce vita…
We’ll do what we can
Of this life
I already know she will pass
In the blink of an eye
As fast as a snap of fingers
From dust to dust
And I’m not being emotional in telling you this, on this gray Sunday: call your father this morning, if he’s still there.
He will see your call as a sign… Exactly, he was thinking of you.
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