She wanted to see the eclipse like others want to see the sea. But the stars were first aligned so that we would miss the astronomical event of the century.
My mother has had daily radiotherapy treatments for a month and a half. The last of its 30 sessions was scheduled for Monday at 2:15 p.m.
What time does the eclipse start? 2:14:28 p.m.…
” Oh ! No ! It’s not possible ! I didn’t realize it was at the same time! », she announced to me with annoyance on Saturday.
Where were you during the eclipse of the century? In the fourth basement of a hospital parking lot.
I would have liked to tell him: “We will get back together. » But since the next total solar eclipse in Montreal will not take place until 2205…
Her name is Amal. A first name that means “hope” in Arabic. She carries it with grace, she who always persists in hoping. If she undertook this marathon of treatments, it is precisely in the hope of not losing the vision in one eye, threatened by a tumor. Hoping to continue seeing the beauty of the world for as long as possible. But wouldn’t it be ironic if this exhausting race deprived her of witnessing this unique moment of beauty?
PHOTO PROVIDED BY RIMA ELKOURI
Our columnist Rima Elkouri and her mother, Amal
At dawn on Monday, she called radiation oncology at the CHUM to try to change the time of her appointment. We kindly agreed to move the session to the morning, under an eclipse-free sky.
While waiting for him, I watched with emotion as the wall of the waiting room was transformed into a bulletin board of thanks by patients grateful for the care, the compassion and the dose of hope they received.
“There are no words to express all my gratitude…” wrote Guy, who was treated for throat cancer. As there are no words, today he expresses his gratitude in gestures, by being one of the volunteers who offer coffee, juice and a kind smile to patients at the CHUM.
Someone had pinned a poem by Andrée Chedid on the bulletin board, transcribed by hand, which looked like it was written on an eclipse day:
I anchored hope
At the roots of life
Facing the darkness
I created clarity
Planted torches
At the edge of the nights
Clarity that persists
Torches that slide
Between shadows and barbarities
Clarity that is reborn…
My mother came out of her last radiotherapy session with a big smile of gratitude, her radiotherapy mask under her arm. Released in time for the celestial spectacle she had been waiting for so much.
We chose to observe the eclipse from Place Alice-Girard, in front of the Science Complex of the University of Montreal, where an event was organized. A special CISM eclipse program was broadcast there with the participation of astrophysicist Nathalie Nguyen-Quoc Ouellette.
Everything was accompanied by an appropriate soundtrack: Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler, Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers, I asked the moon from Indochina, When the sun says hello to the mountains by Renée Martel, Let the Sunshine In from The 5th Dimension… We were also lulled with an original work with aerial sounds by Vivian Li and Thomas Augustin (Malajube, come back!), students from the music faculty of the University of Montreal.
Before all this, a side of me, I admit, was going backwards. The media hype, the hunt for “real” glasses and the security hysteria around the eclipse had finally taken its toll on me.
But once there, the mystical beauty of the spectacle quickly shut up the curmudgeon in me.
While the astrophysicist explained that this extremely rare event in Montreal occurs once every 18 months somewhere in the world, my mother said she vaguely remembered having already witnessed an eclipse in her youth in Syria. My father, who grew up in Senegal, had clearer memories of a total eclipse in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, in 1959, during one of his first trips, when he was 22 years old. “It was dark in broad daylight for a moment. Then the roosters started crowing like it was morning! »
Place Alice-Girard, in the middle of the city, there was no rooster crowing when the Moon passed in front of the Sun, but a joyful clamor in the crowd. Sitting on a bench next to my mother who was whispering her delight, I was seized with shivers which were not only due to the sudden cold.
For a few moments, the pale light beneath a silver-crowned sun had something surreal about it. It didn’t feel like dawn or dusk. But it was so beautiful. Like lights that are reborn.