Me, suddenly in a caregiving position for an elderly person; smack in the middle of the shutdown. Who would have guessed…
It all came to me today during a thirty-minute taxi ride. This: Despite the best laid plans, one cannot foresee the future.
In the middle of this deep black hole of a strictly enforced shutdown, prohibiting all outdoor movement (confinement as it’s called here), we had to sign the clause of “imminent danger to a person of fragility.” Jacques’ mother, at age 95, is not well at all, and we are now at her side 24/7.
Yesterday, we spent the night here in Ville d’Avray, and today we made a quick trip back to Paris to gather the essentials for a longish stay. The essentials include transporting Biscuit, and this will quite possibly endure until the end of the shutdown, sometime in May.
Mrs. Chuilon has excellent aids who arrive twice a day for the basic hygiene needs, and her lovely neighbor has been bringing meals. For months, as it turns out. But the neighbor is near the burnout point. The problem right now with hospitals or the even finest nursing homes, is clear: putting a person in at this moment, if not a death sentence due to the virus, is at the minimum a period of long and scary, solitary confinement, with total strangers in an unfamiliar situation. Remember the mantra, Absolutely No Visitors Allowed! And the doctors we’ve consulted all agree, because of the pandemic virus, this is not the time for that switch, inevitable as it may seem. Obviously, like all old folks, the lady is more comfortable in her own surroundings.
So. Jacques is cleaning out clutter and is in charge of grocery shopping, and I’m doing the cooking and the cheerleading. I’ve known the lady for forty years, and do well remember her brilliant mind before the dementia. Oh, the books and the authors she could recite, the dates of history at her fingertips, the general culture in her grasp, from classical music to art history to travel. She told me many stories of surviving the war, “la guerre de quarante,” and this situation of fleeing Paris makes it all come back to me. Fun fact for my opera friends, she was a student of Ketty Lapeyrette.
The lemonade side of this unforeseen situation includes a beautiful, sunny balcony overlooking a vast park. In fact I’ll be able to enjoy walking or running in the private grounds and taking in the calm of Nature during this long, long stretch. The neighbor I mentioned is really delightful, now that she’s relieved of overwhelming responsibility. She has given me her priceless wifi password! And she still comes over every afternoon to bring a treat and some good cheer for my mother-in-law.
Ville d’Avray was legendary in the 19th century for its charming private homes, luxurious villas thought of as country residences for wealthy Parisians in the summer months. The nearby pond here, where Corot had a home all his life and which he often painted, is charming. Although the former Chateau of Sevrès is long gone, the immense forest and gardens that remain are of unequalled magic, and are nearby.
The ride back into Paris today was of a beauty that one could only describe as ideal, especially perhaps coming after over three weeks of being basically locked indoors. With the windows open, we sped past endless plantings of brilliantly multi-hued tulips in the public areas of Sèvres. As if an impressionistic blur, the powerful colors and the odors under the warming sunlight of blooming lilacs, the very first blossoms of glycinia, and the always welcome flowering of iris, marveled and charmed my eye. And I’ve only mentioned here the purple flowers!
Along the itinerary then, as the car sped on its way – we were the only ones on the road – we crossed the bridge that joins the western suburbs to the capital. The driver followed along the banks of the Seine under the dome of a perfect, unpolluted blue, and I saw the familiar Eiffel tower emerging on the right. “The Grand Lady,” as it is known, seemed a reassuring metaphor indeed. The Place de la Concorde was likewise without traffic (the restored façade of the Hotel Crillon shown in contrast, blazing proudly its columns in the sunlight), the immense Musée d’Orsay came up on the right, closed of course to visitors, and simply flew by, the magnitude of the Louvre impressed with its permanence and rhythmic grandeur. The beloved museum and its contents will surely survive this horrible episode in history, as they have endured revolutions, plagues, and two world wars.
If my wifi connection permits, I’ll still be here during this most unusual and improvised hiatus. I’ll be at the sink washing dishes and looking afar, over the playing empty fields for soccer matches and the tennis courts, once joyous, and now barren of children, belonging to a school that’s been closed; or will be tending as best I can to the needs of loved ones who, as all of us, are destined by a Force that moves like clockwork, and who find ourselves at various moments in various degrees of fragility.
It’s a lesson learned by observing the actions of my own parents since I was very young, or my own brother more recently, and now it’s my turn: There are some things you just have to do.
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P.S. Jacques has chosen to not communicate about this difficult subject on his Facebook page,