Renée Martel’s funeral took place in March and it still haunts me. In this last week of August, in the tranquility of my courtyard where it always smells of summer, I think back to this last wish of Renée who had requested that none of her songs be sung at her funeral. What humility… In the immensity of the Saint-Frédéric basilica in Drummondville, without your voice, dear friend, I was really able to concentrate on that of Father Saint-Jacques. I am not a believer, but in such circumstances, we listen to those who break the silence.
“She built her life on rock, solid,” he said. My boy, kneeling on the pew, his slender trunk, turned his head around to observe the place of more than 200 years of history where he was. Bigger than his room, suddenly. And I couldn’t help looking around either, wondering: these people united for the same person today, what are they building on? Because, although we know that we should never take anything for granted, we must have some certainties to want and be able to go through life.
A bloody good movie, for example. That we watch with the same emotion, even if we know what will happen. Earlier this summer, at a children’s party in a park, 10-year-old Renaud came to join in a conversation that until then had been taking place only between adults. “Hey, you too have seen Jaws ? ! ? he launched, the sun in full face, with such enthusiasm that he decided to stay with us. Well yes, my man. everyone has seen jaws. This film was released before you arrived, we saw it before you. And if there is one thing certain in life, it is that, in 50 years, the two notes which announce the presence of the shark will still terrify the spectators. Watch all your favorite movies as often as possible, never throw away the toys you love, sit down with the people you can share with.
Certainties are very powerful. Choosing the same restaurant meal because you know what it’s going to taste like. By continuing to open up, you have to know your rock, the things, the places and the feelings that make you say that you are in the right place. Values. Faced with a difficult decision to make, a discomfort, there is at least that to guide you. Someone who, as much in dead calm as in the blows that hurt, remains attached to his most noble and deepest values, never leaves us completely. Perhaps without fanfare, but with the pride of having respected each other. Or other forms of gilding that people will continue to rely on. Goodbye, golden cowgirl.
But if certainties often represent what is most important to us, we experience the greatest pain when they land. The family, for example. If, all your life, you tell yourself that this is what matters the most, and you manage to make it strong enough to be able to land on it, the day you are let down, you take a villain arrives. You will have to go up the slippery rock by clinging to other truths.
Last Saturday, at the concert of the cult group Wilco in Montreal, its singer Jeff Tweedy suggested to the crowd that his drummer stop playing. It was us in the room who had to clap our hands, manage together to keep the rhythm for a long time, before the band — the most tangible thing we had — re-embarks. “ Just keep it steady, guys », told us the guy who has one of the bands most tights of the planet. Don’t slow down. Don’t fast forward… Be in the moment. You are capable!
And that’s perhaps the surest certainty we have, in the end. That of the present moment, during which we do the best we can, with what we have.