To Paris Alone

October 12, 2013

The final house cleaning until I return takes place today.  After I retired, we decided that it was a waste of money to pay someone to come in and clean the house.  So we chose Saturday as our day and we divided the chores between us.  We also divided the house so that each week we did one level.  The house was always very clean and properly arranged more to the dedication of Françoise than any extraordinary effort from me.  Both together we did the job.  That in short is the summary of our life together.  “Together we did the job.”  We were blessed with a life that was not fraught with overwhelming difficulty, but we had our share – tough financial times, deaths of her parents, deaths of my parents, death of my younger brother – but never difficult times between us.  We were always on each other’s side.  We had no important arguments or fights during twenty years.  Why?  Because we faced every obstacle together and found a solution together and made it work – together.  Among the many reasons that I miss her is the void left beside me when I need my partner to help me overcome difficulty – together.  She is there spiritually in some way.  I sometimes feel that and other times see the result of her helping, but what is not there is the sitting down to talk it out, figure out the solution, putting it into action and then celebrating when we achieved our goal.  That chair in the sitting room in which she always rested to do her crosswords, read or play solitaire on her iPhone, drink her evening aperitif and from which she posed her questions, rendered her answers and measured the possibilities we reviewed – is empty.  Now I speak to a photograph of her and rest next to the urn holding her ashes.  It is all I have that is still tangible, but the feel of a metal urn on my lips is a weak substitute for the warmth I shared with her for over twenty years.

It’s three days until I depart.  My stomach is in knots and there is an enormous lump in my throat.  As I type, her photograph on my computer screen gives the impression that she is reading these words as I type them.  The expression on her face is one of amusement and challenge.  It’s as though she is asking:  “Isn’t that too much what you’re writing?”  She could always make me smile and reduce many of my manic concerns to laughter.  What will I do without her and why would I want to do it?

Last evening I was next door at our neighbors, Nancy and Barney.  We had a nice casual dinner as we watched the first baseball game of the playoffs between my St. Louis Cardinals and Barney’s Los Angeles (though in his mind Brooklyn) Dodgers.  It was a very pleasant evening spent with truly wonderful, loving people.  At some point during the evening, Nancy invited me to spend Thanksgiving with them.  I thanked her, but inside me I felt the stab in my heart of facing that holiday without her.  We were not holiday people, but we had our own traditions.  So many Thanksgivings we drove down to our favorite place, Palm Desert, and took a Thanksgiving dinner (void of turkey as neither of us cared for turkey) alongside the Marriott swimming pool then drove home in peace.  Last year we didn’t do that.  Françoise was concerned that my growing cataracts might make driving back at night difficult if not dangerous.  So we dressed up and went to The Grove for a movie and dinner.  A photo of that evening hangs here in my office and she is beautiful.  We are about to enter a very difficult time – November (Thanksgiving), December (Christmas), January (our wedding anniversary), February (Valentine’s Day), March (her birthday).  Surviving those five months will push the limits.  We shall see.  We shall see.

October 13, 2013

Getting very close to departure.  I’ve already packed my main suitcase and squeezed in what I can.  I’ve double checked documents and think I have every thing.  I’m scared.  I’ll say it straight out.  I’m scared.  Pascale knows I’m scared.  She sent me an email worried about that.  She’s afraid that if this goes badly that I’ll never return to Paris again.  She is my closest friend in France and has been for almost 30 years.  We’ve been through a lot together and she has always been there for me and I love her for it and hope that I can be as strong for her.  But… I can’t tell her if I will ever return to France.  I hope I will and I hope I never do again… and that is where I am two days before I leave.

I know it’s totally stupid or superstitious or something but it sickens me to leave Françoise behind in LA while I go to Paris even if all I’m leaving are her ashes.  They have given me some solace.  I speak to them.  I kiss the urn.  I caress the urn.  Psychotic?  Maybe.  But it’s the way it is and now I must leave her behind.

I ask her: What do you think I should do with the apartment?  Keep it?  Sell it?  It is so full of our “things” which represent our life together that I wouldn’t know how to handle to disposition of those things.  Do I toss them, sell them, ignore them?  Too many things to think about when all I want to think about is her.  I hate that I have to dedicate time to anything but her, but that is the trap in which I exist now.  The only job I really want to accomplish is her bench at the zoo.  Everything else is meaningless.  And that is what grief brings to one – the lack of meaning – there is no longer anything of meaning in life.  It is a void.  It is a black hole sucking all that was good in life into its void.  I have been through the pain of divorce, but that is not grief.  That is mourning.  It is temporal and the person from whom one is divorced exists and you can miss them, hate them, want to kill them – but they are there to be the object of your emotions.  With death – there is nothing.  If the love lost is profound then life after is now and forever meaningless.

TO PARIS ALONE

It was Paris.  The beginning and the end were Paris.  Anne-Françoise was born here and she died here.  We met here and we parted here. To state categorically that the beginning and end were in this apartment on the fourth floor at 5 rue Bachelet, Paris 75018 is poetic license.  It actually began one floor up and ended a ten-minute bus ride away.  But I still claim it as truth.

We departed Los Angeles for that final trip together to Paris on June 20, 2013, one week after my birthday that we had not celebrated as we were saving the celebration for Paris.  We were returning to France for the wedding of a good friend.  We were also excited to see the new bathroom in our apartment.  Finally, after so many years of dealing with the old bathroom, we had commissioned a total renovation.  We had seen photos and it looked wonderful.  It was wonderful.  Françoise was overjoyed at the result.  Combined with the hardwood floor we had installed the previous year, the apartment was looking very elegant.  She would have only a few weeks to enjoy the changes.  In early July, she began to experience nausea, acid and eventually jaundice and ascites.  Her breast cancer from which she had been in remission for five years returned with a vengeance attacking first her liver and then her spine, her pancreas and her lungs.  On July 18, 2013 at Hopital Bichat in Paris, she died.  We held a funeral for her on July 22, 2013 at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.  She was cremated and I returned with her ashes to Los Angeles where she wanted to spend the rest of her days.

We always considered the apartment in Paris as ‘our apartment’, but since Françoise had purchased it years before meeting me the title was in her name.  Now that she has died, I must go through all the proceedings of inheritance that the French call le succession.  Under French law this proceeding must be completed and all taxes paid by the sixth month following the death.  For me, that means it must all be completed by January 18, 2014.  I don’t know how long or complicated this will be so I have gathered all requested documents and am returning to Paris – alone.

Two weeks prior to my departure for Paris, I received an email from my neighbors, Jean-Luc and Laetitia with some very bad news.  There appeared to be a water leak coming from my apartment.  Jean-Luc went to investigate and when he opened the door to the closet where the water heater is installed, the water heater fell off the wall, burst and released one hundred liters of water across the apartment floor – across the new hardwood floor.  This will sound wrong, but I am happy Anne-Françoise isn’t here to see this.  She would be devastated.  I was devastated and truly felt this was the straw that would break the camel’s back, my back.  I was suicidal – not figuratively, literally.  But there was work to do.  Not just the completion of the succession in France, but more importantly I was in the process of arranging a memorial bench and plaque at the Los Angeles Zoo where Françoise volunteered and where she found immense joy and peace.  So it was necessary to continue to live – at least until these plans were completed.  In my anguish, I asked Françoise to help me and guide me through this difficult time.  And my angel reached out and provided me with other angels.  Those angels, Jean-Luc, Laetitia, Jacqueline and another Laetitia (imagine two Laetitia or is it two Laetitiae).  They took it upon themselves, with my approval of costs, to repair the apartment and further to do an overall cleaning so when I arrived it would be livable.  Great good deeds or a miracle inspired from beyond?  Does it matter?  But I honestly believe that my love, my wife, my angel was the driving force behind this even if it is only a reaction to the love she showed everyone when she was alive.  The apartment is ready for me, so now it is only the journey and the arrival that I must confront.

We had a system.  Or more correctly, she had a system for travel.  Several days in advance of our departure she would ask me to lay out the clothes I wished to take with me.  I would do that and then she would tell me that it wasn’t enough.  I argued that there were washing machines in Paris.  She wouldn’t hear of it.  We always compromised.  I added a couple of additional shirts and one more pair of trousers and maybe threw in a sweater or two.  The day of packing, she would insist that I go off and play golf and leave her in peace to prepare the suitcases.  When I returned she would be beaming with pride that the suitcases were ready and she wanted me to weigh them.  We have this handy luggage scale.  I weighed them and they were always below the airline limit.  Her eyes would demand praise and I was happy to give it.

Now I have to attempt to follow her system of packing although I have no idea exactly how she went about it.  I know I am not taking enough clothing – especially since it is fall slipping into winter in Paris – but honestly, I’m at a loss so I’ll do my best and hope it works.  After all there still are washing machines in Paris.

October 11, 2013

I am now four days from departure.  Today I focused on checking, rechecking and packing all the documents I believe I will need for le succession.  In this case, I think I’m definitely packing more items than are necessary, but unlike clothes should I lack something there will be scant recourse once I’m there.  The last major document, the title to the apartment, is in our papers in Paris.  I know exactly where it is, so there is no stress involved.  The one thing that will stress me is getting an appraisal of the apartment so the tax man will know how much to punish me for having dared to inherit the apartment I have called my second home for over twenty years.  With the help of my dear, long-time friend, Pascale, I have secured the services of an English-speaking notaire in Paris and in my neighborhood.  A moment to explain the concept of notaire -- this is not a ‘notary’ as we imagine in English, rather a notaire is a lawyer who specializes in property transfers, wills, and any major transfer of money.  It is my notaire who will finalize all the necessary documents.

I will try and be a faithful diarist during my travel and time in Paris.  I don’t know how I will feel entering that city and then the apartment alone for the first time in twenty years.  I have no way to predict my emotions.  I know that I have many friends standing by in Paris ready to support me and that gives me some comfort, but still… this apartment was the beginning and the end of our life together.  It is sacred.

Another part of our preflight ritual has always been to eat every perishable thing we have in the fridge.  This leads to some rather unusual meals, but it has always amused us as we blended this with that so that her carefully planned weekly market slowly disappeared leaving the shelves of the fridge vacant.  She smiled with great pride when we had accomplished to chore.  Equally important was that following the last Friday before our flight (Friday is trash day chez nous) we deposited no trash in our garbage cans.  Instead, it was tossed in the cans of one of our wonderful neighbors (yes we have great neighbors in two countries).  As I prepare to head off to Trader Joe’s for some final necessary foods, I am also planning my menu of unusual meals and yes I do smile at the oddities that arrive on the table.  Even now almost three months after her death, she takes the lead and I joyfully follow.

I pulled an old suitcase out of the garage today because when I left Paris in August transporting her ashes, I had to leave one of our ‘good’ suitcases behind.  I will exchange this old case for the new one once I am there and leave this old case behind.  And yet… this suitcase from the garage is part of a set Françoise was given by her colleagues at 3M Paris when she left to come to marry me.  It’s a beautiful part of a set by Lanvin, but she never really liked it.  So I’m torn about what to do with it.  I will probably leave it in Paris for when I need a temporary bag of some sort.  Does that imply that I will return to Paris after this trip?  Perhaps… I would very much like to take my daughter, Damien, there with me some time before I sell the apartment, but she’s a mom and a working psychologist (which has been to my benefit) and a wife, so for her to find the time is difficult, but I think it’s very important that she touch that mysterious part of my life.