New Year’s Eve is celebrated uniquely in France. People gather for an elaborate multi-course dinner called “Réveillon” that usually begins with oysters. It commences around 8:30 PM and the pace is leisurely and convivial running well into the night finally disbanding around 2:30-3 AM.
Shortly before midnight, the champagne is poured and when the clock strikes 12, a toast is made and people circulate around the table kissing everyone in the usual manner on both cheeks.
This past New Year’s Eve I was invited to the home of neighbors down the street, Pierre & Violane Dufrêne. Pierre inherited his family home following the death of his four maiden aunts. While he grew up here in Montréal, his career took him farther south to Perpignan close to the Mediterranean Sea. Upon retirement, he returned to the village. His family has been here for several centuries.
From the outside, most of the houses in the village look the same and show their age. What is inside is often a mystery and more often a surprise. Their home is immense, actually two homes connected. The kitchen has an open working fireplace still used to cook. High ceilings predominate. The dining room is huge, bigger than my main floor. Not long ago, Pierre & Violane hired an artist to paint the beams in this room in the ornate medieval style with brilliant reds, blues purples, greens and gold. It was incredible to behold.
Pierre was a kind man with a ready smile. He’d sit quietly and take it all in with only the occasional word. I had visited their home a few weeks prior, an impromptu stop on my way home. As I passed their home, Violane was outside closing the window shutters. We chatted briefly then she invited me in to meet Pierre and have a drink. She phoned my neighbor Claude to join us as she had introduced us in the recent past. (There’s another funny story there as Claude was one of the first people I met coming to Montréal. Being ever so polite as there is a certain formality here, I use the more formal style of “Madame” and “Monsieur.” So I began calling her “Madame Claude.” After a few months of this, she told me that Madame Claude had been a notorious brothel “Madam” in Paris so asked me not to call her that. Whoops!!)
Claude soon came and we had a nice chat. It was that evening Violane asked me to join them for Réveillon. I was delighted.
I learned that evening Pierre had been diagnosed nearly two years ago with a form of leukemia. He was holding his own but slowly deteriorating.
Pierre declined slowly. Rumor was in early July that he only had a few days left. But he held on for another month and Monday afternoon, August 3, he breathed his last. Pierre was 76. Claude came by to tell me. Before long, we heard the mournful ringing of a single bell from the church’s bell tower announcing the death of a villager.
The tradition is to place a book of condolences in front of the home of the deceased for people to come sign. Once arrangements are finalized, a printed announcement indicates the details for those wishing to attend.
Most people in France are secular. That is, religion went out with the French Revolution. The Catholic Church and its cardinals, bishops and priests had done such damage that all religion was rejected. Churches, convents and monasteries were confiscated and became the property of the state. They still are today. Monks, nuns and many clergy were either banished or killed, sometimes via the guillotine.
Today, there are few who attend any church, no matter the denomination. So weddings take place at the city hall and funerals take place at the crematorium or cemetery. Funeral homes as such don’t exist.
Pierre’s arrangements were a combination of both crematorium and cemetery. Given the pandemic, what took place at the crematorium was limited to close family. All were otherwise invited to the cemetery yesterday afternoon (Thursday) to mark the commitment of Pierre’s ashes to his family plot.
I walked from our “quartier” (our neighborhood) with Claude and a few other neighbors the short distance to the cemetery, just a block north from the main road. With the others, we huddled beneath an arch to get the shade protecting us from the 93 F sun. About 50 people were present.
Pierre was a poet. So the ceremony was led by his children and close friends reading two of his poems and personal memories. It was brief but fitting for his wishes.
Dressed as one would for a funeral in the US, I wore a suit and tie. I was the only one so dressed. In part due to the heat, but also due to the more casual approach people have here, most people wore short-sleeved shirts and light clothing with hats to protect themselves from the sun. I will know better in the future.
Following the brief readings, Claude and I were invited to the home of a lovely couple I had met at a dinner Claude had last summer, Margo & Philippe. They both speak a bit of English so we went back and forth though with another woman present, the conversation was mostly in French. I’m getting there….
It was a sad day. Claude had grown up with Pierre and had known him from childhood, so she was particularly impacted. These events are a gentle reminder of the cycle of life and our time will one day come. I hope that my own demise will be right here in my home having lived the life I longed for in France filled with good friends. We don’t get to choose but we can always hope.
He sounds like a vibrant spirit. Glad you got to know him even if only in the last chapter of his life. The French seem to know how to both live and die.
So the French created secular traditions to mark the passing of time. I hope our efforts today in the USA will make it a better country for the common people as what the French Revolution did for theirs. Thank you for the insight.