The C2Montréal conference has just ended. Three superb days where commerce and creativity go hand in hand. Participants from more than 70 countries exchange contact details and promises to keep in touch. C2 is the bella figure of a processing part of Montreal.
A few days before the start of the conference, a journalist contacted me to ask me if Olivier Royant was going to take part. The question was legitimate. Twice, Olivier had been a speaker and each time, like all his other trips to the metropolis, his visits were punctuated by a series of interviews he gave to Quebec and Canadian media. It was an exercise that quickly became a tradition, which he loved and which I knew well. I was the architect. Olivier Royant was the boss of the magazine Paris Matchonce my client.
” No. Mr. Royant will not be at C2 this year. He is dead. As soon as the words were spoken, the journalist burst into apologies. I couldn’t blame him for not having known that, on December 30, 2020, cancer had taken the life of the man who had become one of my best friends. That my friendship with Olivier was unique. Deep. Unsuspected. Nor could the reporter know that his question would destroy me and obliterate all other memories of the day of his call.
There are four themes that inhabit me and that feed more and more my reflections. Love, forgiveness, redemption and mourning. Our relationship with each of its themes shapes us and sets us apart.
Our personal interactions with these themes define us. Well I think.
Art, in all its forms, has always been and remains an excellent vehicle for understanding, deconstructing, rebuilding and expressing love. Faith and religion have often laid the groundwork for the principles of redemption and forgiveness offering a form of outline to help us better navigate, adapt and apply them.
But for mourning, it is more complex. For a long time, the subject was taboo and seems to have been amputated from almost every canvas, making not only its management, but also its understanding more difficult.
The pandemic has been unforgiving for millions around the world. To this must be added the number of people who loved them and who were confronted with a grief that was often unconventional and more cruel than the others, dictated by health restrictions. And now, in the midst of COVID-19, the most influential country in the world has chosen a new leader.
There is certainly a two-sided list of reasons that explain the victory of Joseph Robinette Biden. Among them was the great need of the voters for a Chief Comforter.
From the start of the pandemic and during the presidential campaign, his opponent never had the concern or the ability to comfort the too many bereaved.
Alas and in spite of himself, the loss is a subject that Joe Biden masters well. He was first confronted with it violently in 1972, when his first wife Neilia and their daughter Naomi perished in a car accident. Then in 2015, when he was Vice President of the United States, his son Beau succumbed to brain cancer. In Promise Me, Dad, Biden Sr recounts, without reserve, the debilitating effects of grief, thus lifting the veil on the incomprehensible and what had too often been left unsaid. When the book was released in 2017 and since then, the president has often broached the subject — for the benefit of those who unknowingly needed to hear it.
From then on, in the public square, we are witnessing a certain loosening of tongues and a greater sharing of experiences with mourning.
At the age of 10, Stephen Colbert – the popular television host – lost his dad and two of his brothers in a plane crash. It’s a story he shared with his viewers one night in 2019 when he guest-starred Anderson Cooper – the famous CNN reporter – on his show. Cooper, whose mother had recently died, had also lost his father at age 10 and 10 years later his brother Carter. Spontaneously and touchingly, the two men spoke of grief and loss, as two war veterans speak of battle wounds.
Shortly after, it was Anderson Cooper’s turn to receive Colbert, to resume the conversation and deepen it. The excerpt from the interview in which Stephen Colbert will say that “mourning was an extension of who we are for the rest of our lives” has gone viral and the washington post will call it the best TV moment of 2019.
But what this great television moment will reveal above all is this collective need to hear about mourning more openly and honestly. To stop drowning him in grotesque banalities like the one that claims that with time, it gets easier.
It’s wrong. With time, it’s different, that’s all.
So when, on the eve of Mother’s Day a few weeks ago, second-grade teachers at an elementary school in Quebec City suggested an initiative to protect children who may or may not have had a mother, I could only recognize in it – beyond its execution – an important act of great benevolence. Like Father’s Day, these celebrations are important, but they will remain unbearable for many until we learn to talk about grief better.
Are we witnessing, thanks to these public figures, a new inclination ? If so, let’s hope it’s here to stay and celebrate that it’s a trend that could do us good.
Nota Bene : This test marks the beginning of a summer break. While waiting to see you again in August, have a great summer everyone.