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By
Jacques-Albert Calixte
La vie, avec ses bénéfices et sacrifices, nous laisse des cicatrices. As I reminisce on the pristine moments we have shared in my family, summer was the ideal one for me for the bittersweet memories it left in the vestige of my thoughts about you. As a little boy growing up in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, I have always treasured that season of the year for its double objective: the inception of a three-month long vacation, and my birthday. As soon as I finished my last exam, I would make it a point to stand guard by the phone waiting for your early morning phone call to tell us: "Kids, the Airline tickets are on the way!" In retrospect, it was probably one of the rare occasions that I could afford to be boisterous in front of my father (with no anticipated punitive damage) before I would bring the academic report card. Following that, after a week or so, I would receive the birthday card you would send to me along with a crisp, brand-new $5 bill or a roll of $10 in quarters, and a box of cookies. Like the circuitry of a thousand cities, I would be in a euphoric state for days. With my new fortune, I would go see a movie or two and allow myself the luxury to be a flâneur, a boulevardier while eating a delicious ice cream. As I am relishing these clichés in the vintage era of innocence about you, these cherished souvenirs melt the yesteryears away in the museum in my mind. They are an indelible mark in the archives of my past.
There is a quotation from the book "The Little Prince" by Antoine de St. Exupery that is a blueprint for my life: "What is essential is invisible to the eye." Affection, terms of endearment, Des p’tits riens tel qu’un sourire ou un baiser that I should have whispered or done for you now and then were buried underneath the veneer of my everyday life. Once, on a Mother’s Day in Haiti, a Spanish teacher at College Notre Dame taught us a little poem about the virtues of mother’s love. Its first few lines were: "Eres, O, madre mi querida, pues me da tu corazon la dulzura de la vida." Back then, I could not really value these words because I never knew what it would feel one day to be without a mother. I took you for granted.
As I reached the puberty phase, the early memories we had together were becoming a footnote in the album of my life. The nexus between us started to fade away. I became too focused on myself, and too selfish. Gradually, I grew apart from you. Worse, while I was discovering myself in the last stage of my adolescent period, I became a rebel without a cause. I was seeking adventure like a rustic buccaneer. I needed to paint a sharper picture of myself on a larger canvas. I wanted to dance to a different drum. Unfortunately, I guess that I have hurt your feelings with this conundrum. Still, it was a necessary phase for me to chisel my own identity and proclaim my uniqueness to the world. Like the burning bush in the biblical book of Exodus, the bush that burns but is not consumed by the flame, the quintessence of your love toward me sustained itself, and nurtured itself throughout these trials and tribulations. You were like a lion who did not need to roar.
It seems as if it were yesterday when you came back from that fateful morning in the middle of 1994 with the unbearable news that the lump in your breast was cancerous. The fear and confusion that seared the family after your diagnosis has been a journey of a thousand miles. Yet, you kept a stoic facade in facing your fate. By 1995, the cancer has already metastasized behind your lymph nodes. Once, I saw the strains on your face behind your smile after one session of chemotherapy in 1995. Slowly, you started to lose your hair, your appetite, and your will to live. You slipped into eternity around 1:50 AM, Wednesday, June 7, 1995: a strong gift for my father’s birthday on Thursday, June 8.
In the flower of my youth, I thought the summer mornings were exquisite for the pleasure and joie de vivre that were to be discovered in their endless evenings. However, my 25th birthday marked my painful transition in the arena of life. Three years ago and two days after that birthday, I woke up on a Saturday morning with an arrow piercing the chambers of my heart. I felt lonely in a crowd full of mourners. Suddenly, the roles were reversed. Comme dans le poème de Jules Romains, “L’heure Suprême D’être”, je cessais lentement d’être moi. J’étais perdu dans la nature. The moment has come for me to say au revoir to you in your fight against breast cancer. It was my turn to carry your coffin to the cemetery and watch you for the last time in your eternal sleep. The years had exacted a toll on you. In the casket, your face looked worn with care. It made me remember the other-worldly look in your eyes the last time I saw you at the hospital. However, for all the tears that were shed in the final prayer at the cemetery, for all the sorrow that was to scatter over so many tomorrows, and for all the hurt that will remain in the mosaic of my psyche, I knew for sure at that moment your soul was already in another galaxy, billion of miles away. It really hit me like a torpedo, when my sister Regine, started to get hysterical, and said: “M’ pap we l’ anko“.
Now, I finally understand the popular French quotation: “A l’amour d’une mère, amour que nul n’oublie“. It is said after a certain age, the lines on our faces begin to trace the path of our lives. “Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, we will grieve not, but rather find strength in what remains behind… in the faith that looks through death, in the years that brings the philosophic mind” wrote the British poet William Wordsworth. Whether I will savor the nectar of success via the uncharted paths of my destiny or endure the agony of failure through countless midnight suns in the hustle and bustle of life, ‘til we meet again, I can only express my feelings to you in these four words:
Maman, tu me manques!
