Clémentine Vergnaud was a journalist at franceinfo. She died on December 23, 2023 after battling cancer detected a year and a half earlier. She was 31 years old. On June 1, the podcast she cared about so much was released. First ten episodes where she recounted her fight against illness, her hopes and her doubts. For, she said, “leave a trace”. A few weeks before her death, from her hospital room, Clémentine wanted to resume the thread of her testimony. Here is the last chapter of “My life facing cancer: Clémentine’s diary”.
I have never been a believer as such. What helps me enormously is being surrounded by my loved ones. To be honest, I was born unbaptized because my mother wanted us to have a choice. I did a little catechism as a child, like everyone in my class, because I wanted to do it by imitation… Even if it didn’t go very well with the holy water frogs of the place where I was born, who didn’t want me to sing at Christmas mass because I wasn’t baptized! It distanced me a little from Jesus. I never really had a parallel belief — I don’t know if we put it like that — a belief, a religion, a faith. I never told myself that if I did the right thing, I would end up in heaven. I never thought like that. What calms me down is mainly my relationship with others and the presence of others. The presence of these essentials around you. And that’s what’s being built right now around me, here.
This is where I feel that I am very lucky to be surrounded by my loved ones. I have my parents, I have my husband, my sisters a little less because they live far away, poor people. But I at least have my parents and my husband who take turns at my bedside every day, sleep with me, help me wash, eat… Everything that the staff could do, ultimately, but they do it with me. And that brings something else to the end of life. It’s true that we could see the end of life as something terrible, and there are terrible aspects of it, particularly in terms of dignity where at times, it is very difficult. But we also construct moments that we would never have constructed without that. And to rediscover little bits of childhood, little anecdotes, little things like that…. We spend moments that are so much more intense, so much more real, sometimes than… I’m not going to say that it’s a lucky to be at the end of my life, I won’t go that far! But I am grateful to be able to have this end of life. That’s for sure.
“The fear of dying badly”
The fear of death, until now, I have spoken about it in waves. I remember very well the beginning of 2023 when, indeed, we had a bit of a chain of complications, disasters and where I had the opportunity to read a certain end-of-life testimony which was very hard. And I said to myself: wow! but I didn’t prepare that at all! It’s not going well at all, I have to do something because it scares me to think that I can leave in such deplorable conditions. So there was real fear there, yes. To die badly. Not so much to die, but to die badly.
Today, there is a little more fear of dying “for real”. Yes. So I obviously open up a lot about it with my psychologist, who is a wonderful person and who always helps me find the keys to knowing what this fear really corresponds to, what we can find there or not. She is really very insightful and very supportive. And then sometimes, quite simply, I also talk about it with those close to me when things aren’t going well. Like the other night, when I was supposed to be resting, just recovering on my bed, and it came up. And I had my dad in front of me, sitting in his chair, waiting for me to rest. And I knew how to tell him, just: Dad, I’m scared. And he didn’t do anything amazing, he just came up to me, took my hand and said: “I’m scared too.” It wasn’t much, but his hand, my hand in his, and just knowing that he was there, that he heard, that he understood that I could be afraid, that he too shared that… It’s a small thing, but there are times when just freeing yourself from this emotion, just saying it, formulating it, just that, is saving. And to know that others are nearby, whether they understand or not, but in any case to read in their eyes or in their gestures that they will be there whatever happens, is something something that does a lot of good.
My dad is afraid of his own death, I think. He is extremely afraid of mine, but I know that when the time comes — in any case, it’s one of my wishes, I don’t know if it can happen — he will normally have my hand in his. Just like my mother, just like my partner and, I hope, my two sisters. They will be there. Just that, they will be there. It’s support. I’m not looking for a miracle recipe, but just to not be alone in this, and to be accompanied from start to finish, to be taken by the hand, more than supported by the shoulders. Taken by the hand.
“If I was able to help at least one person, I am a thousand times happy”
The illness has definitely changed me. I am no longer the same person. I would say that I am both more cheerful, more grateful for the little moments, these little golden moments that we talked about, that we can perhaps let slip away when we are not sick. And that we are not aware of the tenuous nature of this thread of life. I think I’ve enjoyed a lot more things in the last year and a half than I could have enjoyed. And at the same time, there has always been this kind of shadow hovering above and which took away all my carefreeness. This is often what I said at the beginning. All that had taken away my carelessness. Because, at 30 years old, we’re supposed to go on random weekends, on vacation as best we can and we don’t care, we have fun. And for me, it took all that away because I always had to think about everything through the prism of the illness. But I also think that, yes, it made all these little moments, all these little joys much more accessible to me and, perhaps, much more visible, because otherwise, they can pass and we don’t realize it. account.
I also think that it gave me some joy in life because we still had a lot of laughs during all these ordeals, often. It’s quite astonishing, but perhaps also a part of the joy of living. And then the desire to give, a lot, the desire to give to others and in particular through the podcast. I realized it by the repercussions it had: I could give a lot of things to people while feeling like I was doing little, in the end. That might be a little regret. Maybe it could have come sooner. But this desire to give has increased tenfold. If I was able to help at least one person with this podcast, I am a thousand times happy because when you are sick, you go through a lot. And it gave me so much power back over all of this. Taken. Possibilities to do. To be in action, to be there for others. It was truly, I believe, the experience to be had in this illness, the experience of a lifetime.
Thank you for all these hours of listening. Thanks for that.
Clémentine Lecalot-Vergnaud fell asleep on December 23, 2023 in her room at Paul-Brousse hospital, in Villejuif. She was 31 years old. As she wished, she left surrounded by her family, notably her husband and her parents. And as she wished, it was in her wedding dress that Clementine was buried.
Production: Clémentine Lecalot-Vergnaud and Samuel Aslanoff. Director: Laure-Hélène Planchet. Sound recording: Samuel Aslanoff. Mixing: Raphaël Rasson. Visuals: Stéphanie Berlu, Kelsey Suleau. Coordination: Pauline Pennanec’h.