Jolie Papa
I struggled to get the dress over her head. I had made it
for her when she was just shy of 6 months. Today she is 7 months old.
Yesterday, amidst all the people in the house crying, dressed in black, I asked
for the scissors from a French aunt that I barely know so that I could cut
little snippets of the dress to get it on Amaya. I had hoped that she would
never wear her funeral dress again.
“Quelle jolie robe,” and “A funeral is no place for a baby…” my stern French father-in-laws voice echoed through my head though I knew he would appreciate her there. From the day that I miscalled him “jolie papa” instead of “beau père” (French for father-in-law, but literally means “handsome father”), the name stuck. Even his friends would tease him and call him “pretty daddy”. I have had the unfortunate chance to attend two French funerals in the space of a month. The first was for my husband’s dear, sweet grandmother. The one who wanted me to meet all of her relatives so she gave me a tour of the old cemetery, telling me each person’s history. She watered the flowers for her mother at the old family crypt and she said, “someday, this is where I will end up.”
“There are only two spots left,” my mother in law says to no one in particular her voiced leaded and heavy as we following in the first car behind the large van-like hearse filled with flowers and of course, a coffin.
“Grandpa wants to be incinerated.” my husband replied and offered in his dazed state, “Me too.” We drove through the vineyards and tiny villages, a carvan of twenty-odd cars. Police blocked traffic at the three stoplights within the seventeen kilometer drive to the old cemetery, the one that is not taking reservations any longer for lack of space.
“Well, we could always make room on the floor in between.”
she sighed as if we were planning a sleep over. We arrived to the gates barely
wedging the large car through the ancient cobble stone street packed with on
lookers.
My poor husband, “I can't get that image out of my mind.” he said to me
that morning.
And I can't shake the vision of my husband running into our
kitchen, tears streaming down his face. Holding our baby who was oblivious to
what she had just seen as well. I plucked her out of his arms and held her tight
like a koala bear while my husband, shaking, dialed 18, the emergency number in
France. He tells the dispatcher, “I just found my father dead downstairs.”
Amaya was silent once more during the funeral procession and the speeches until
they got to the part about her. That she, his only granddaughter was a ray of
sunshine in his life. He had wanted to stop drinking and smoking, years of
abuse on his body, so that he could see her grow up. Amaya made her comment in
the form of a cry that pierced the crowd. I stepped back away from the mourners
to the shade of another person's family crypt. There I read about
Hundreds of people listened to the kids from his school sing a song, full of
tears, each little ruffian holding a singe red rose. He was their father as
well. He was the director of a boarding school for children orphaned by their
parents willingly. He was their Santa Claus each year dressing up and arriving
in the school court yard via a
I carried her to the open tomb where she spoke in her own language to him,
neither French nor English. She reached
out towards that deep dark space where most children would be afraid. She gooed
and gahed and tried to kick her way out of my arms to crawl in with jolie papa.
Not yet, please don't take her, it is too soon.
