By the
time I got to France, my mom was already in a coma from which she wouldn’t
awaken. There was no opportunity for last words. She had a private room at the American
Hospital in Paris on the Boulevard Victor Hugo. Forty-six years earlier and
almost to the day, in a rare Parisian snow storm, she’d given birth to me in
the very same hospital. Now, the cancer that slowly destroyed her had
progressed too far for another operation. When it became obvious that there was
no chance of survival, her oncologist increased her morphine drip and she
passed away quietly.
I arrived
at the hospital hours after she died. She looked incredibly small under the
white sheet that was pulled up to her chin; her room smelled of flowers and
disinfectant, and a light Parisian rain streaked the windows. I didn’t have any
great, illuminating thoughts save the hackneyed one that, finally, she was at
peace. She had always been terrified that my father would die before her; that
worry was now at rest.
I remembered
that the last time she’d been hospitalized, about a month earlier, I’d spoken
with her on the phone and all she could talk about was how she had received
more, and bigger, bouquets than a patient down the hall, a famous French singer
called Serge Gainsbourg. “Qu’est ce que tu penses de ça,” she asked. “What do you think of that?” It reminded me of the time, decades earlier, when
the impossibly French Maurice Chevalier came to our American home for dinner. My
mother had met him shortly after the war and he was touring the States one final
time, still garnering recognition and accolades for his role in the movie,
Gigi. He was very old and frail by then, but could still command the attention
of all the other guests. Getting him to come to our house was one of my mother’s
major social a coup, but he failed to impress her. “Hmm,” said she after the star had left. “His
table manners are terrible. If I were on tour, I wouldn’t eat salad with the desert
fork.”
Before
being hospitalized for the last time, she spent her last days at home in her Paris
apartment being the perfect hostess, playing bridge with her friends, serving
hors d’oeuvres and refusing to accept the inevitability of her own death. She
had told no one about the severity of her illness but my sister, Isa, knew. She
had summoned me from Washington with a late-night phone call. “Viens vite. C’est
sérieux,” she said, and Isa was never one for exaggerations.
My
father may have also known—how could he not—but he so feared the awareness that
he simply refused to accept it. The Alzheimer’s that would kill him a few years
later had already taken hold. It worsened immediately. He was confused, alternately
laughing, then in tears, her disappearance too much for him to comprehend. When
he finally did, a light in his eyes faded and never returned.
There
was a flurry of activity. Even in death she was a center stage and this would
have pleased her. Some four hundred friends, acquaintances and, I suspect, a nemesis
or two, attended her funeral service. My father shook hands woodenly, accepting
condolences with the nod of his head but never entirely there. I stood next to
him in a suit that was too thin for the weather and held on to his right arm. He
too, seemed smaller.
Her
ashes were spread at the Père Lachaise Cemetery on Rue du Repos, and she was
well surrounded by famous people. Guillaume Apollinaire, Honoré de Balzac, Oscar
Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Edith Piaf, Marcel Marceau and yes, Jim Morrison, whom
she’d never heard of but probably would have liked.
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