“When I say that three of my children are dead, people answer me: ‘How do you do it?’

When you decided to put this story down on paper, did you ever worry that it might add to your pain?

I don’t see what can add to my pain (laughter). What would add to my pain would be a dramatic event. But I wish I hadn’t written this book. The death, in particular, of Gaspard. I might have been sad if I had written about the why and the how, but I wanted to go beyond that, to talk about tomorrow. I’m not talking about what happened, I’m talking about what happened afterwards.

Have you ever used the word “survival” to talk about your situation?

Yes, because, at the beginning, it is all about survival. Beyond life. I think of those people who experience tsunamis and who develop the ability to run for hours to save their lives. The surprise lies in getting out of survival mode: I thought I would be in survival mode my whole life.

“Sur-vie”, we rarely read it like that, but can it paradoxically be a supplement to life?

Yes completely. Something we take from life. Like I felt like I had extra heartbeats. It’s something we don’t expect, as if we have untapped abilities within us and, in these exceptional circumstances, we can resort to them. We don’t know we have them to this extent, even though I had already experienced this with the death of my two daughters, Thaïs and Azylis. At the beginning, these are not decisions that we make, even if afterwards, fortunately, we regain our freedom, we recover our possibility of choice. It is all that we are, all that we have been, and that we continue to be, which then acts for us.

“What do we want? Besides being in someone’s arms?”

Would that mean that at that moment, you were you, but differently?

Yes, even a little surprised. Many people tell me: “how do you do ?“. Sometimes I say to myself: “How did we do it?“The moment we tell you the death of your child, what did we do? At first, we think we’re going to die. Be careful, we’re not going to die, or commit suicide, but we think that life will stop.

What phrase do you hear most often?

When I say that three of my children are dead – which doesn’t happen to me every day – I am told: “How do you do ?” Even when the sentence is not spoken, everything says it in the reaction. When people know my story, they say to me: “How brave you are “And when people have read the book, they don’t tell me “bravo !” more “merci“. You mentioned earlier the universality of this book, which nevertheless has such a singular inspiration. It is a story that rarely happens, but it speaks of the universality of man confronted with suffering.

Do you ever get angry?

Not that I get angry, but there are times when I say that… I have no choice. What choice do we have? Then we realize that we have other choices. Deep down, I understand people’s reaction, because it’s unimaginable. If someone had told me:You will experience the death of three of your children; you will survive it; even continue to live and be happy”I would have said: “Impossible“. You shouldn’t put yourself too much in other people’s shoes…

Sometimes, it is said, for ease of language, that writing heals.

I think there is a therapeutic value in writing. This allows you to put events into words, to take events out of yourself, to keep them at a distance, and to look at it differently than from the inside.

Writing, where it heals me, is that I write a book that is shared. It reconnects me to others. If this story is read with this awareness of the universal, it is because the singularity of my story can be reached by everyone. This reinforces my feeling of having found my place, with my suffering. May this unspeakable suffering, once written, be less frightening.

But who is it that we hear saying “ouin ouin” from the Porte de Namur?

You recount this episode where you are at the beach. A lady approaches you to chat. And you must tell him: “I have four children, I lost three“. Silence. As silence reigns, you add: “I like your swimsuit“.

At that moment, see, I try to tell him, with this sentence, that I am normal. But then she sees me as an alien: on the beach, with my book, my towel, like anyone else. Nothing suggests what I experienced. And she’s bugging, because she no longer sees me as a woman but as a mother who lost three children. And to tell him how much I am still the woman I always was, I talk to him about his swimsuit. And it’s dissonant for her, it’s incidental, whereas for me, this futility, this lightness, is essential. There is a necessary readjustment to be made between two people in these circumstances.

How do we ultimately manage the fear of others?

Dread, yes, fear, not always. Silence, for sure, or on the contrary, the chatter of people who want to fill. But either I talk about my life, or I shut up and stay in the den, or I act as if nothing had happened, but that, that, I can’t!

Most of the time I use simple words. “My children are dead“, because I have tamed the situation. But the person opposite is not at that stage, so I try to take care of them. I often console people.

I told myself that you must console a lot. Besides, it’s the name of one of your previous books, Consolation, in 2020.

We console as we have been consoled. As I have been greatly comforted, I comfort as much as I can.

You say that you are doing an ultrasound of the heart and we don’t see anything special, this heart is unharmed. Would you prefer it to be visible, like a tattoo?

I prefer that it doesn’t show because I’m ultra-flirty and if I can avoid having a dark face and dark circles, so much the better.

But this ordeal impacted me physically. I’m talking about Gaspard’s death, it was such a shock that things changed physically in me. I had heart arrhythmia for a long time. And… I changed my smell! However, this heart is love, the vital organ: it couldn’t be possible that my heart wasn’t marked… But there is nothing.

What makes us mothers? The mother is above all a social being.

You also speak beautifully about the “ifs”. “Ces if who give you the hopeless feeling that life is played out for nothing“. We very much believe that life is about “ifs”. What do you say to people who think that we are in control of our lives?

I want to tell them that they are going to have some surprises. When everything goes well, we feel like we’re in control, but we’re not in control of anything! For Loïc, who is the man of my life, I fell in love at first sight, I couldn’t control it, except that as it was a joyful event, I didn’t question it. I think we can’t control happy things or unhappy things. It’s absurd that in five minutes, things happen. We are alive, and then some! We think it would have been enough to correct a little thing. But this tiny little thing is life: a moment is nothing, but if there isn’t that moment, it’s not life. Realizing this is a reset of what life is.

Especially since we cannot act on the “ifs”. Are we really puppets? We, in fact, have all our freedom to act. But the question is: what do I do with what happens to me?

So you managed to get rid of the “ifs”?

They come back from time to time. The worst part is the “If onlys”. If only the nurse had arrived five minutes earlier, he wouldn’t have died (the eldest son, Gaspard, committed suicide in the hospital during a devastating depressive episode, Editor’s note). OK, he wouldn’t have died by then, but the nurse hasn’t arrived and I can’t change him.

You write that you, for a time, “moved backwards, towards your dead”, and that there was work of reconnection to be carried out with the living.

When we are in pain, we live for those who are no longer there, they obsess us. But if I don’t live for Arthur (his youngest son, Editor’s note), it’s no use. I’ve never had a tattoo but I carry my children differently. I have these rings that represent my daughters; that pearl ring is Gaspard. And I just added this one, with a crown, like the king, for Arthur. It is he who invites me to be alive.

⇒”Adding life to days”, Anne Dauphine Julliand, published by Editions des Arènes. 138 pp., €18.