| Zero
Storm |
One
Common Drama |
Two
for One |
Three
Pivotal Years |
Four
Generations |
Five
Ring Circus |
| Subject: | Where are you? |
| Date: | Saturday, February 7, 1998 22:14:53 - 0500 |
| From: | Jérôme |
| To: | Silvana |
I know you are at the mountains with the kids. But I really need to talk. Your mobile phone is unreachable. After I wrote you, mom talked just a bit, but she could still understand everything. Also, she could not move her legs.
Then yesterday, delirium struck.
I walk into her room. I say hello and try to kiss her. Instead, she grabs my hands. Her eyes have the sharpness of an eagle: "I want to slap you". Oh my... I am stunned.
Then the story comes out. She is mad at me for having cohorted with the Spaniards... And they ended up coming into our place.
What?
I told you not to do it.Wh-what?
Look! They're hidden there. Behind the bathroom door.
So I play along. I open the bathroom door and prove no one is there. She asks me to check well:
There, behind the curtain
No... see, no one is there
She has a fine grasp of everything around her. But I am still perplexed
Oh... Are you sure? You know you cannot rely on them. They're addicts.
yeah, right..You bet! Let me tell you. That's why they robbed us. They need money, or things they can sell easily. They do not work, how do you want them to find the money for their drugs?
Ok, Ok...I just don't understand. I told you not to mix with them. That this would all finish badly.
Ok, Ok...Right. And it did finish badly. You found a way to let them in and now, we've lost everything. Not just the money... there were my family's chinese antiques... I want to slap you!
*She* may be on drugs, but none of this is imaginary. Everything matches once I make the connection. She is combining her present situation with some episode from 1967-1968. A time when I grasped things were not going too well for her. The anguish that these would be her last words bowls me over... I must have drifted in and out of her room a dozen times to try to clear my thoughts. 
I am not too sure what happened; I just know that we did not say much, if anything, after that. She was mad at me and I did not want to go through that an umpteenth time.
Today the seas are calm again. She is conscious. She understands. Her speech returns. albeit under severe hesitation. Yet she is very tired.
These last few days, strange thoughts drift through my mind.
On Tuesday, I was walking through Mount-Royal. I wanted to stroll through this place, its soul stolen by the ice storm, to better grasp emptiness. This park is so huge, you cannot hear the city even being in the heart of it... Deserted because inaccessible, frozen in place by typical February temperatures and full of injuries... a perfect refuge. At the same time, I wanted a brother or sister to give meaning to these moments, to bring more to this departure.
Then on Wednesday, sitting on the bus, admiring a biting and splendid winter morning, my thoughts went further. 
I imagined our kids in a similar situation. I could only see myself in Aubert's shoes, with an older sister. One that sees the approaching pain. One that shares, like no other, these moments. Some part of me was missing. It is as if I had been robbed.
I rather forgot all that when I got to the hospital; I simply panicked. Now, it is slowly coming back to me. I really wish Mom had someone else to rely upon these last years. Sure, I had to carry all the weight. The worst part is that all the bad blood between us might have been dissipated by the presence of two (or more) children. And maybe she could have focussed more on the positive things... I feel like I have failed her in some respects.
J