Yve's Passing

Michelle’s Father-in-law, Yves Paret, only waited until his wife was buried; then he too died to join her in that world beyond. Both had been in the same hospital but in separate wards. Yves was heavily sedated with morphine to lessen the pain of terminal cancer. Did he know his wife had died? Or didn’t he? We can’t be sure because we cannot see beyond the boundaries of this dimension. But it is perhaps meaningful that these two people, having spent a lifetime side by side, departed together holding hands—or so we see it from this side.

A time of departures is now upon us. Susie’s Rex went first. Then my younger brother Baldy. (In the next world he’ll now be older brother Baldy.) That was 2019. Spring of 2021 Madeleine and Yves. Brigitte and I are next in line. We know this—but in a casual sort of way. In one’s advanced years such things as passing become quite commonplace.

Au Revoir, Madeleine

 Speaking of old age and its ultimate consequences, we learned four or five days ago that Madelein Paret—Thierry’s mother and hence grandmother of Michelle’s children—has passed away after brief hospitalization in France. As Brigitte put it hearing this news: “Madeleine is home now.”

We barely knew the lady, but in the course of at most three visits to France we came to like her very much. The elder Parets lived (and still live) in Haguenau, a small city almost at the north-western tip of France—close enough to Germany so that Madeleine and husband Yves could speak a little German. Our meetings go back some 30 years yet produce sharp images of crowded dinners (all family) and Haguenau, the curious border town. Between then and now, we kept abreast of one another by mail and, later, Facebook.

 

Memory at our age: sharp enough to picture vividly aspects of events. But structured and chronological memory is week. I had to look up Haguenau in a Christmas list and then on a map. How long ago? I got there by taking our oldest grandson’s, Max’s, age today…

 

Requiescat in pacem, Madeleine. We’ll see you probably soon when the Earth train stops us at heaven’s gate.