French Letter: A death in the afternoon and a French funeral
Our little community, deep in central Brittany, was hard-hit last weekend. On the afternoon of his 46th birthday, our friend Justin, a native of Plymouth, told his French wife, Cecile, that he didn’t feel well. Then he sat down, clutching his chest, and died. It was all over in less than a minute – a massive heart attack.
“There was nothing I could do to save him,” Cecile told me, in floods of tears.
Justin was a lovely man. A true innocent abroad, he had simple values and a generous heart. He leaves a 12-year-old boy, Gustave, a stalwart of his school’s basketball team, and Lilly, just two and a surprise late addition to the family.
The funeral service was quite an occasion. At least 150 mourners turned up, almost equally divided into English and French. Justin’s family, just off the boat from Plymouth, are evangelical and there was a strong religious element throughout the funeral. In response, one of Cecile’s cousins sang “Ave Maria”, and the Our Father – La prière du Seigneur – was recited in French, accompanied by much mumbling within the body of the faithful.
Widows and widowers are all too common in the expatriate community. A majority of Brits who turn up here start out in their fifties and sixties, and over time life takes its inevitable toll. Those who are left behind can find it difficult, especially if, as is usually the case, they don’t speak a word of French.
Brexit has added to the difficulties experienced by everyone from the UK living in the EU. Most of us in Brittany are still waiting to receive our titres de séjour, giving us the formal right to remain. French driving licenses are much harder to obtain but will soon be mandatory. Applications for citizenship can remain unresolved for years.
For the bereaved, the main challenge is much the same as they would face at home, with the added complication that they rarely know where to turn or to what they might, or might not, be entitled to.
My wife and I have a friend – let’s call her Sally – who at the age of 79 suffers from agoraphobia and since the death of her husband three years ago feels trapped in her home on the edge of a rather pretty village. Various friends take turns to look after her, but she is not an easy woman to please. She will only drink one particular white wine (from South Africa; she doesn’t like French wine) and one brand of madeleines, and only feels at home in the branch of Lidl that is furthest from her front door.
To this day, she doesn’t understand why the undertaker who organised her husband’s funeral expected to be paid.
Sally doesn’t drive, and in any case, has problems with her eyes. A couple of years back, she had cataracts removed, free of charge, in the hospital in Quimper, after waiting for no more than six weeks, but relied on her very patient, English-speaking doctor to get her through the experience without having a mental breakdown. Just last week, our optician, Pascal, who switched her paperwork around so that she was able to claim new distance glasses without having to fork out the cash, confided that giving her an eye test was not an experience he would wish to repeat. She hadn’t a clue what he was on about and left it to me to choose her frames, complaining afterwards as we left the shop (passing a Scotsman in his kilt squinting at an eye chart) that she would have preferred the frames from Italy that would have cost her 200 euros.
But it happens to all of us. As Sally says, “growing old ain’t for cissies”. Being in a foreign country just adds a further level of complexity.
The tragedy with Justin and Cecile is that they were young and had no reason to suspect that death was about to come calling. They had plans to start a new business this autumn, renting out rooms in their large home to French and English students wishing to learn each other’s language. Cecile, from Angers, on the Loire, is a qualified English teacher and Justin had a head for business. What happens now remains to be seen, but Cecile is a fighter and I’m sure she will come through in the end.
It’s hard for her and hard for the children. Gustave was close to his father, with whom he always spoke in English. His cousins from Angers – handsome lads who acted as translators for Justin’s English family – did everything they could to support him during the days before and after the funeral. But they had to return home, leaving him to be comforted by his pals from school, who, as my wife observed, formed a protective peloton around him throughout the funeral.
Justin’s mother, sitting bolt upright in her chair, told us she had been “knocked for six” by the news that her son had died. But the face she put on was resolute. The body, she said, was just an overcoat. The soul lay beneath and they would meet again in heaven.
As she spoke, she looked down at her granddaughter, standing next to her French mamie, Bernadette, beneath a sign put up by Justin that read simply, “Home”. How do you tell a two-year-old girl that she will never see her daddy again?