The long sunny holiday in mid-May is often an opportunity to open the windows and doors wide to let in the light and warmth of spring. We definitely put away winter boots and coats. (Although knowing very well that it is not really definitive, that they will rather be shelved until the cold weather returns.) We are starting to clean the windows and balconies. We even vacuum places that we have knowingly ignored all winter, such as in the broom closet or under the rubber mat in the entrance, which has the effect of causing a spontaneous generation of small rocks. You know those little rocks spread during the winter to make the sidewalks less slippery and which, I don’t know because of what spell, we cannot completely get rid of before Patriots Day.
It’s like a spring change, we leave warm woolens behind to reconnect with light cottons. Trousers give way to the top of the pile to Bermuda shorts and sun dresses. We sort through things to give or sell. We reinflate the bicycle tires, we grease the chain. We reconnect the garden hose, we take out the plants, we clean the garden furniture, we buy annuals to fill the planters. The neighbors doing the same thing, we greet each other and ask for news of the youngest, who was born during the winter.
There is something euphoric in this great commotion, surely the promise of a drink with friends on the terrace or an afternoon reading a thriller on a deck chair. The laughter of the children storming back into the alley makes us want a soft vanilla cream dipped in chocolate. The time of this big cleaning scented with lilac and lily of the valley, we forget the small and big torments. We see life reborn in the tender green of the leaves.
But it’s not because the birds are courting or because the parasols are open that our distresses disappear. Loneliness, poverty or illness resist the beauty of daffodils. This feeling of renewal, this surge of hope, this sunny cheerfulness does not penetrate all hearts. Some of us do not have access to this lightness, either because our souls are taken in November, or because our worn bodies will not allow them to see the new brood of swallows.
Far be it from me to feel guilty for being so delighted with the return of sunny days. We have the right to marvel at nature that explodes with life, we have the right to smile to the angels while feeling the warm wind on our cheeks during a long bike ride. It is even imperative to take advantage of it and savor our luck. You need a lot of happy people for it to be a good place to live in society.
So it’s while I gorge myself on this springtime sweetness that I think of Caroline Dawson.
This fabulous author deeply moved me with her book Where I hide. The story of a child uprooted from her native Chile, but who quickly succeeded in creating a rhizome in Quebec and flowered, deploying a flamboyant corolla. No doubt this echoed my own immigration abroad during childhood, but above all I believe that this woman possessed an extraordinary curiosity and empathy, giving her work a sublime wisdom and a disarming truth of simplicity.
Caroline Dawson died on Sunday May 19, 2024, one of those spring evenings when it’s so mild you wish it would last forever. As of this writing, his death has just been announced. I had to rewrite this column, because I believed that time would have allowed him to read it or have it read to him. I wanted to say thank you to him. I hoped, selfishly, to offer him a little bouquet of compliments to color his last days. I say selfishly, because above all I wanted to free myself from the sadness of his premature death.
I didn’t know her personally; we had mutual friends, but I followed her from afar, I listened to her on the radio. She remained luminous, even when the treatments began to weaken her vocal cords – it was only her voice that broke, her words remained as relevant as ever, as solid as ever. She remained playful, honest, articulate and passionate. It commanded admiration and made us furiously want to discover literature off the beaten track. This woman was a jewel of our culture and her death is a terrible injustice of nature.
Later, when the sun has set a little, I’ll go and water the flower boxes. It will be nice on my little Montreal balcony, I will greet the cyclists who pass by my house, I will offer the children a walk to the creamery. I will wear a large, light and silky dress. My teenager will make jokes, my little one will comment on the neighborhood flower gardens. We will be “happy with a spring that warms the rind”, as Gilles Vigneault would say.
But my heart will ache thinking of Caroline’s loved ones, for whom from now on the flowering trees, the myriad of tulips and the territorial song of the cardinals will be so many memories of the day of her departure. Every spring, his death will come alongside the life that is reborn in the hearts of the people who loved him.