As soon as they saw each other in a box at the Grand Théâtre de Québec on Thursday evening, Alexandra Stréliski and Mélanie Lachance fell into each other’s arms.
“I felt your light,” the pianist confided to this 42-year-old mother, who will receive medical assistance in dying on Saturday.
“It was a beautiful last show, a beautiful soundtrack to end it all,” replied the one who was in the audience with around thirty members of her family and friends.
“It was my pleasure to do that for you,” added Alexandra Stréliski, during this exchange captured by TVA Nouvelles.
“Music kept me alive”
What a touching and human story is that of this photographer, originally from Beauce!
Condemned by medicine following a second recurrence of ovarian cancer, Mélanie Lachance decided to choose the moment of her death herself in order to leave with gentleness and dignity.
However, between now and the big day, there was no question of feeling sorry for oneself. She spent her final year with her foot on the gas, making the most of her passion: seeing shows.
She did the Summer Festival, Osheaga in a wheelchair, venues all over Quebec. “Music kept me alive,” she said, in an interview with TVA.
To the sound of Fanny Bloom
The music will accompany him until the end. When she takes her last breath, Saturday, around 1 p.m., surrounded by her two daughters, her lover and his daughter, a song by Fanny Bloom, an artist to whom she listened a lot during this entire ordeal, will resonate in the chalet where she spent her final hours.
“We will certainly cry out our lives. At the same time, my body makes me understand quite well that it has to stop at some point,” underlines Mélanie Lachance.
Indeed, her physical pain increases, but that does not prevent her from taking an admirable, positivist look at what she has just gone through. “I had the best year of my life, but the most difficult. It went even better than I could have hoped.”
See life through his eyes
Mélanie Lachance will leave this earth by giving back. She agreed to donate her cornea to Héma-Québec.
“I didn’t really know with everything I had what we could give. Finally, there is the cornea. It will be given within the next 14 days. It’s still quite concrete to know that fairly quickly, someone else will be able to benefit from it,” she relates.
“My doctor told me: you have such a beautiful way of looking at life. To think that someone will see through your eyes, I’m happy that these are the tissues that can be donated.
Thus, even in a world that is said to be better, Mélanie Lachance will continue to illuminate people’s lives.