In his dreams | Press

It’s a cancer story, but it’s not going to bring you down. I assure you.

On the contrary, I left my meeting with Leon Khachkhachian with a lighter heart. This Montrealer, of Armenian origin, born in Lebanon, told me about his illness, the loss of an eye, the wait for a deadline, and he did it by increasing the brightness of the room where we were. .

We met at the St-Raphaël palliative care home. Léon attends his day center because he does not know when he will “go upstairs”, that is to say in one of the rooms reserved for those who are at the end of their life.

Leon remembers very well what he lived on January 18, 2016. “I was watching television and, suddenly, there were lights in one of my eyes, he told me. . I thought it was from TV. ”

His optometrist immediately referred him to a specialist who told him he had ocular melanoma, a cancer that usually affects the uvea, the layer between the retina and the white of the eye.

After two surgeries, his doctors decided to remove his left eye. When metastases were detected on his liver, Leon made the decision not to receive treatment.

The specialists then gave him a life expectancy of one year. The 60-year-old has passed that threshold. “I’m lucky my tumor isn’t growing much,” he says.

Leon lives from day to day. He refuses to let himself be overwhelmed by this harsh reality. So he looked for ways to keep his head above water. This is how he had the idea of ​​going to Anne Lacourse, a music therapist who accompanies the people who attend the day center of the St-Raphaël house and those who occupy the rooms.

Anne combines the role of music with the people she sees in various ways. “Sometimes I make music with them, other times we sing. Sometimes I improvise and give them a little relaxation, she confides in her music room. With other people, I make recordings that they wish to bequeath to their loved ones. ”

With Léon, the music therapy sessions took the form of an author and composer relationship. He writes texts that Anne sets to music. “I’ve always loved opera, but my relationship with music ended there,” he says.

Anne asked Leon for a first text. This gave In my dreams, which visibly inspired Anne. She made a very beautiful song out of it, which she performed in front of me.

“When I sleep, I dream, I contemplate, I cry, I scream,” Anne sang in her soft voice. There was a lot of emotion in the room.

“I wrote this text, because in my dreams, I am healthy, I still have both my eyes,” said Leon.

From this first collaboration, the valve was lifted. Léon wrote 22 other texts. “He’s too prolific for me,” Anne added with a laugh. At the moment, three songs have been completed. ”

Leon discovered he could write. And that the fact of putting words on paper makes it possible to say things differently.

The one who was a computer technician for a long time put his career aside. Besides his meetings with Anne, he attends meetings with other people who have ocular melanoma. For the rest, he takes care of himself. Achille Volpi, acupuncturist at the Maison St-Raphaël, helps him relieve his pain and anxiety.

“I am well surrounded,” said Leon. My brother is my best friend. I have wonderful nieces, good friends. Of course I am experiencing some uncertainty, and I wonder when the bad scanner will come. But as I say in my song: life is good, life is sad… And that is good for everyone. ”

And there, before I left him, he had this amazing sentence. “You know, those stories of people dying and coming back saying they saw a light… Days ago, I almost can’t wait to see it. ”

I left Leon and Anne to their working session. They started discussing a song topic. It was there that I understood that by devoting himself to these workshops, Léon was not putting his destiny on the back burner. He became the author. So the master.