The next day, the morning after a restless night, my bear of the night took me back to the shore of the bed. I kept my eyes closed long ago, torn by its resolution not to come support my fevers. Especially not wake up! I sleep as he stood by my side. Pretend, keep your eyes closed! Overnight in a flat boat that ran a long pole we chatted quietly, heavily. I can still hear his deep voice unspoken.
A wordless exchange between the anxiety of my fears of the unknown, death and the grave of his reassuring words, his "you'll see." Slowly, carefully, making sure it did not mask, however, it was scary to learn that the death was not informed.
You are great now.
"Your auntie died, his body no longer moves. The country is all-white is populated by people who do not move, no longer speak, sing no more. "
- Because they were not wise?
- Do not be a child, you are great now.
- But why you do not want to come?
Was it to help my courage? He offered me some as a feeling that fever, little by little, leave me in peace. Finally, a little peace. If she returned, it would be less often. I should spend my nights alone. Alone with the pain and emptiness at the heart of his absence.
He had spent the whole night to lead me on the great lake of fog which covered the valley at night. Embarking on the river, located just before and turning her back, I had even dream about, not daring to look. Had I ever done? He gave me a tour of never-ending river, the mill over there that made us laugh, much to the elbow which carried behind the forest. From the shore we were past the meadows, gradually, as in dreams, and from there, everything was allowed; up survey of the village houses. Patiently, slipping in the middle of everything white, it gave me grief weighing in interlude, flying over the village homes of friends. I had greeted with bursts of joy fleeting dream in the dream
"Well, you see me?"
And their smiles down time gave me a strength to admit, a few seconds, the terrible shock Auntie's death initially attached, forever, my companion of burning nights. The journey was long, how often went there to my room many times that my petitions brought us back to another round in the boat flat. This strange
flat boat that had nothing incongruous - we must say that I knew so much. We see him sitting and I needed without question. It was I who had brought a fancy dinner awakened from sleep in diving. He had taken command for them to say goodbye.
When there was a death in the village, a formal division of labor in City Council had decided the distribution: a coffin carpenter, the wheelwright. Later I was amused by this wheelwright who played the "Charon". The coffin! The coffin was the feast of breaking the routine of days. The apprentice or worker would stay there at home, at dinner with us, then he would work at night alongside the father until the morning when we find him at breakfast. He had to hurry to the happy days of free fridge. The coffin ready, drive the van to the home of the deceased ... and thence in a world without undertaker, my father and his apprentice, fresh from his 14 years, attended the final moments of families prior to beer by them ... epic scenes we came back and made us happy at the family table during those years. Fifty years later we still contons when it so happens that we encountered:
A family just lost his grandmother.
- Yes Lucette've told me at school, she just died. You'll make him a fine coffin dad's grandmother of my girlfriend?
- Of course my darling, we'll even make him great!
The father, mother, elder sister were all giants. Go for a giant coffin ... The Meme
Lucette kept the room so long that Dad had never seen.
- Hello sir Dames vot'mémé in how it is?
Easy to say at the table, to make children laugh, but faced with a family
crying ... So it was a coffin XXL.
They found the old woman in the room she occupied without leave for months. That's where we bore him his meals and that made him the semblance of toilet use in that time. They had great difficulty getting the coffin into the narrow staircase spiral. My father and Arpette family were out and distributed the body. There was the usual practice that gives parents a few moments of meditation, friends, neighbors ... and then closed church and cemetery management.
Some families insisted that the deceased took with him a object, a watch or a prayer book. It even during those times when a particularly vile old man was leaving, his wife, a boxing bug in the same category, insisted to put this and that and something else before my father and stoic priest who looked at his watch. The son of the house approached my father resigned:
(low voice with a serious prison door, before the entire bereaved family)
- Marin mister?
- Ouiiiiii ...
- You would not still a little room?
- But surely, slipping here on ... the side.
- Could not save the old woman?
When we need to work to live, we cross difficult moments.
But that day it was not the Atreides to the funeral, but much worse for my father ...: The Meme
giants was a quasi-dwarf, a tiny bit of good wife. Hindered the father! Cushions claim to people who are crying and staring at you wrong?
She was put in box and towards the door.
Ouch! The empty body separated from its cover was well past the go but to return, even down, macache!
He had to go into the barn to look for strings. Where are those pesky strings? What he said his son just now? Will make him repeat it.
A rope at each end, we approach the coffin of the window and bad idea ... An end to the window sill and the other to the ground.
Chhiiiii Flochhh , Granny falls south pole is the toggle
outside
Chiiii Flochhh , North Pole
We try as much as possible to descend to the ground either horizontally. But in the window frame, you hesitate. Until ground, the horrible landslide. Loading into the van. It seems that even at the entrance to the vault ...
burials until Auntie was so. Gales of laughter at the table, among the cousins at the workshop, a few of our happy connivance.
These coffins, he had to do them well before putting the same too small
Invariably events unfolded the same way, the dialogue closely.
We're here, my brother and me in the studio to turn them around. Choose the wood. The oak smell strong for the rich and walnut "only for the poor" ... You had to see the contortions some embarrassed son or sons in law from claiming "walnut-is-too-well-anyway" . A true test in this world where what people will say it does not spare ourselves, we, not peasants. More
took shape over the coffin we were excited ... He stood there on the bench, like a hundred times renewed call to our ingenuity.
And presto, we jumped in and armed with a piece of board we will simulate a ship. For the wooden coffin was a dark and serious wonderful boat coxswains rivers and aspiring sailors.
Tell Daddy you make us a coffin yeueuueeu?
Wasting no time we were playing marbles in a game where no one could afford his usual antics distasteful: step aside and get lost in the floorboards or below, and then ...
The ritual meant that Once finished, Dad goes to bed in and called my mother.
simulated panic which ended with a slap because "there were enough of these silly games"
This game often ended well. Laughter as an island lost in the perpetual fear of slaps unsuspected. Children know when it's time to smackdown. Some live without knowing it because they are absent, them and their borders. To me they were fluid and undetectable, reality sometimes had his chance but he was so fickle!
So that was the life of laughter and slaps that end in the coffin to the grave-boats!
From my Auntie's funeral incomplete archive begins at the graveside. Concentration prior family, the little jacket that rasped neck, polished shoes that hurt their feet, nothing stuck.
It starts with the same impossible Question: Dad does it on purpose to make funny faces to make me smile? I never watched it, but just a little ahead in the confusion of cries and moans triggered in the procession of women in black, while ten meters earlier
... ... What was he saying?
What could it be?
The same gestures to hide the head, eyes, mouth, this attempt to take an attitude, the immediate cessation, and it starts with the arm gestures ... Meeting an assumed sorrow that has no time settling that already disenchantment of his sister called to order. Was that the reason for this clash between opposing feelings at the confluence of attitudes? The cohort of black women found no favor with me.
I learned.
I found this gesture several times to Halloween and the following year after the anniversary of the death. The same theatrical play which became ever more a grimace, increasingly reduced or even barely sketched.
Twenty years later, at the bottom of a hospital bed where I was going a bit unexpected and yet so inevitably, I recognized the actor at the draft he drew up his act quickly on the shelf of unnecessary accessories. I was swimming in blood, and one that I lost the one you gave me. There was not enough to make so many expenses.
I found myself yet, true to my old shadows, in a sea of white - in hospital - and the great thing was the stream of blood that left me and one who, with difficulty, just fill the void. In the mist of a feverish night or was it one day, my old friend, the Bears came back to me. His return after all this time gave me the serenity that contrasted both with the red eyes of the nurse who had stayed up all night, pushing with the finger during hours, the blood perfusion was unable to penetrate the body that went peacefully.
Quiet, I remembered the graveyard scene, this peak 20 years earlier, after the cries and protests too much pain and handkerchiefs tucked into bags immediately got back in the car. Slamming clasps bags, slam the wooden ruler from the Lady of the cathedral later to make us sit up, his knees, the same deep fervor. The meal was waiting for us, "should not be expected when one is in people." Uses this occasion I was told by Mom Queen usual way. I remained a little apart in the driveway deserted, frightened and disoriented. The real sadness had taken me there, while his dummy sidekick had left the others to the imperatives of the goose to oven.
So that was it!
Parents, cousins, relatives, or less, took the colors with an aperitif. The meal was great as usual. At the end of the table completely forgotten children and Globule who do not lose one. It brought back memories of those hours of lively discussion at the limit of the dispute over the merits of cooking oil Huilor and Lesieur. Queen's was remarkable for this sentence imperishable.
"You can say what you want me but I keep Lesieur" The malevolence of Globule forever remember him saying. The was a nasty Globule!
Donatien Stealth
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