The time of mourning | The Press

There was a time, very long ago, when news of great departures spread with a slowness that is almost inconceivable today. Neighbors visited each other, people called each other, others jumped in front of their television when they were told on the news about a death that had occurred several hours, or even a whole day previously, we opened the door in our dressing gowns one morning to discovering on the front page of the newspaper that someone had left, that one more void existed.

My father remembered the assassination of John F. Kennedy, announced by a lecturer who had burst into the class at the University of Montreal, where he was. If the event itself was significant enough to remain engraved in his memory, it was the speed with which the news had reached him that amazed him: the assassination had been televised, live, and therefore people like him , located thousands of kilometers from Dallas and light years from the American political sphere, were able to be informed only a few minutes later.

I remember the morning I went into my mother’s room to wish her a good day before leaving for school – my parents had to go out in the evening and only found out on the news. to 10 p.m., after I go to bed. She woke up and said to me: “Something terrible has happened. » It was December 7, 1989, and I learned that 14 women had been killed, almost 15 hours after the tragedy.

At a summer camp where I spent a few weeks every summer, the news of Gerry Boulet’s death had spread, several days late, between the bunk beds and picnic tables. A monitor who had called his parents must have been made aware of his death which had occurred the previous week. He had taken his guitar, we were singing Still alive around the fire.

The repercussions of these dramas and these departures then unfolded over a period of weeks and months: declarations, tributes, and decisions, monuments and spectacles – the mourning was long and slow, we experienced it first in an intimate sphere. , some friends, parents, a sleeping mother.

When one of my friends sent me a link announcing the death of Karl Tremblay, I had time to be deeply distressed by the departure of this man whom I did not know, but who really seemed of a real good person, to show the news to my chum who put a hand on his heart and then, immediately, the tsunami.

Text messages, new articles every minute, kids coming up from the basement with phones in their hands, “check this out.” Cowboys Fringants music everywhere, in the pickle row, in the car, in a parking lot. At the pharmacy checkout: “Is that terrible enough, han?” » No introduction, no context, quite certain that we were not talking about Gaza.

Touching, funny, crazy, overwhelming, uncomfortable, inspiring – it’s been a long time since I heard such beautiful and sincere intonations in the pronunciation of the words “people” and “Québécois”. But there was something destabilizing in this exponential and dazzling accumulation of testimonies, something which prevented assimilation – no downtime to sit in silence and contemplate the departure of a dad, of a chum and a person so important to so many people. Importance that I had obviously underestimated, just like our need for gentleness in this hard November and our immense desire to share.

Hard to say whether each demonstration was well-intentioned. For every “Karl” written with lanterns at the foot of Mount Royal or with oysters on the ice of a fishmonger’s counter, there was a famous boss appearing with a completely bewildered look and a too-tight t-shirt. Union break. We suspected that some people spoke out because they felt obliged to do so or because the opportunity to convey a message presented itself – politically, no one could remain silent, even those who would have preferred to cry in silence.

Suddenly, everyone was there, at the same time, it was piling up, it wasn’t a wave, it was a flood. We were far from the slow percolation of the past, collective mourning that we wove with mittens to shelter our sorrows, makeshift quilts that could take shape over years, decades. It remains to be hoped that this dazzling pain will still live and evolve over time, and that this deluge will not be absorbed too quickly. There are sometimes beautiful flowers that grow in the soil over which we have taken the time to cry.