Suzanne Pharand is not well. She’s not going to die right away. Maybe a little faster than expected.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
Two years ago, his health was almost flourishing. However, little by little, his right hip was losing its protective cartilage. Her doctor requested that she undergo an operation to change it. In Lanaudière, the worst place in Quebec to be on a waiting list. And at this specific time when the global COVID-19 was falling on us.
At the time, my mother enjoyed good home-cooked meals. Did his groceries, paid his bills. Climbed up and down the stairs of her pretty split-level in Repentigny without getting too tired. Received his children, his family and his friends.
Split-level gone cursed. Today, it literally drags itself between the four levels. She only manages to prepare meals that are too simple: hard-boiled eggs, “La petite vache qui rit” cheese and potatoes. A few vegetables. Now, it is her children who receive her at home.
And she waits patiently. Suzanne has hope tattooed on her heart. She believes that she is not an urgent case and that there are far worse than her. But over the past two years, my mother has lost 20 lbs and she is getting weaker and weaker. I hear him: “Luckily, I found a magic cream [homéopathique !] which eases my pain. And rubs himself with this substance three to four hours a day. And swallows Tylenol with or without codeine and ineffective Dilaudid.
I can also hear you: “She is 86 years old… Why is she not supported by the State to receive better care? »
But because she doesn’t want to!
It is his right to end his life in his house, in his own way. My mom wants to live it to the last drop. Yes, at the cost of his life. And what a story! Born in 1935 in Montreal into a family of 10 children, her playground was Sainte-Catherine and Saint-Denis streets. Repeated her sixth year, then three times her eleventh… left to work at 19 for two years in the Canadian North as a nursery nurse, lived a happy marriage, which became disastrous – bipolar husband… Gave birth to six children. Seeing her husband too ill to pay the bills, she completed her five years of secondary school in one year, then: a DEC… then a bachelor’s degree in sexology and… finally, a research master’s… My mother became a sexologist at 59 clinician. And above all, it offered us both a secure roof, a good sustenance and respectable studies.
I am moved to see her joyful when her pain subsides: she is still able to admire the birds clinging to the branches of her cherry tree and to light candles hoping that her prayers will relieve the children of Afghanistan a little, Haiti or Ukraine.
But we lose her under the tired gaze of this society which has decided, COVID-19 obliges, that an 86-year-old woman is less entitled than another to receive emergency care. My pain is throbbing like his pain. I swear to you: I would give years of my life for her to finally receive her cursed hip.
And I growl with anger to see this fiery red-haired, independent and stubborn woman end up like the Gervaise of the novel. stunner by Zola. Under the stairs of his split-level.