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Charles Pépin
mid-day sun whitens. It’s
a marvel. A cemetery so
beautiful, it’s troubling. I’ve
never seen anything like it.
Stuck on a hill in the suburbs
of Paris, the cemetery is
not enclosed: after the last
tombstones, if you climb,
you find yourself with your
feet in the grass, on the edge
of some woods. We wanted
a non-religious ceremony
because mom had vaguely
expressed that desire. My
father asked me to run
the ceremony because he
didn’t feel capable to do it,
Mathieu either. It’s a matter
structuring the speeches and
music from within the small
room at the entrance to the
cemetery. We meet in front
of the coffin and everything is
going smoothly. Light coming
through the bay windows
shines off of the coffin’s
handles. While gathering the
speakersduring thepreceding
days, I was thinking about a
sequence and I’m happy to
see that it’s working. After
each speech, poetry reading,
or small word, we take a
second to meditate and I
announce the next speaker.
There’s a photo of mom on
the coffin in which she’s
radiant and we really have the
impression, while listening
to all of the speeches, that
we are speaking truly of her.
In the words of a former
student, she is a teacher
that loved the young more
than her subjects, who knew
how to pacify, to enrich, and
to create laughter. With her
best friend, a presence who
always did my mom some
good, who called when she
wasn’t doing well, it’s not
so much what she says but
simply her voice, nothing but
her voice. With her colleague
who stood by her for twenty
years in the same high school,
she was the one who always
knew, who knows—everyone
has trouble with this type
of past tense—the one who