Salon de Provence, a city in the South of France is the home of French Air Force Academy, it was also the home of Michel de Notre Dame also known as Nostradamus, the legend pretends that whoever drops a flower on the grave of Nostradamus in the Saint Laurent basilica will come back to Salon de Provence, this is precisely what the French Air Force cadet who I was then, did.
Ten years later, I came back as a Major, professor of fluid mechanics and flight mechanics. On my arrival day, I met Maud and it was love at first sight, the beginning of a perfect love which lasted 52 years. She came with two kids, and I brought with me two Doberman females and I have to say that the kids were much better behaved than the two dogs.
Maud passed on to our children and grandchildren, most of the time in a sweet fashion and sometimes with considerable authority the values which make you who you are. From the onset she bestowed considerable love to Lucia and to Kristina, the spouses of Alex et de Nicolas who she adopted and loved from the beginning as her own granddaughters in their own rights. They are not with us today because Lucia has just recently brought Lea to this world and Kristina is due soon to give birth to Andrea. Finally, we have the joy to be honoris Grand Parents of Juliana and Alex Johnson who are with us.
She gave me fifty-two years of full happiness totally devoid of any cloud or quarrel during which each knew perfectly wat the other wanted and granted it before he/she would have expressed the desire thereof. Maud and I Always knew what the other would say before he/she could open the mouth which did not prevent long conversations because after all the years of marriage we still had a lot to say to each other.
Maud had a sense of communication, had a lot of very eclectic friends, most of whom are with us today. They appreciated her gentleness, her ease and desire to understand others. She was an active member of the Arsenal officer’s wife club where she befriended Jacqueline Diot and her parents. She participated in the Café des Francaises group, the members of which competed to prepare the tastiest brunch.
She attended English lessons at the Baptist Church where she was meeting with women coming from multiple horizons of the immigration. The ladies spoke together in English but while they always managed to understand themselves the professor sometimes could not! As we were invited in Argentina to meet Lucia’s family and friends, Maud who never spoke a word of Spanish managed immediately to communicate with everybody and to be loved by everyone.
Nothing that we undertook and achieved would have been possible without Maud. She accepted the risk of moving from the French Air Force to defense industry where most other spouses would have expressed their fears and reservations, to leave the security of a well-established position for the uncertainties of a new life.
Maud accepted my temporary work in Brussels for two years and was able to restore my morale after each frequent reorganization of Thomson-CSF during which everyone was wondering about where they would fall and which would their fate.
Maud embraced with me the uncertainties of the new American life as I was moving from a Vice-President position to a Ph. D student position, a steppingstone which allowed me to achieve a successful career in US defense industry which was my American Dream. At this moment, we met with professor Shtessel and his wife Nina.
She could build from little, a successful Rental Property business achieving thereby her own American Dream, at this time we became friend with Christina Tidwell, a very successful Real Estate figure who is with us. The most flattering compliment she could receive was the comment of local contractors telling
« The French Lady, she is tough. »
Maud had the instinct to find in a dark corner of an antique shop or mall the beautiful piece of art, forsaken by her former owner, forgotten by the store manager and ignored by the shop customers. She would give her a new life and nobility in our house. As victor Hugo would say: “Unanimated objects, have you a soul?”
Maud was an artist she used to paint landscapes, bouquets full of life which I loved, but much too modest she would ask me to confine them to corridors or bathrooms, and I avoided telling her when I was getting them framed. My only regret is that she did not paint the reflection of a pecan tree on the side of our pool reflected therein with the sunrays of the setting sun.
As she had prepared a batch of painting to be sold as charity for the Baptist Church, a client noted that the paint she had just acquired was unsigned and thus she came to our house and this is when me met the Johnsons Dawn and Ronald, and their siblings Juliana and Alex, our best friends of more than 30 years, who are with us and have the kindness to organize the reception. As the taste of antique art is contagious, Dawn caught the (nice) decease and became the most respected art expert of Huntsville.
Docteur El-Bahesh, her cardiologist, where other doctors had abandoned any hope, gave us the chance to try and as we did in the past to beat the odds which we often did throughout our life. The new miracle treatment of targeted therapy acted very rapidly and in just few weeks managed to eliminate half of metastasis and was beginning to shrink the main cancer.
Full of hope, we converted our bedroom into a hospital room, hired caregivers taking an outmost care of the hygiene of Maud to avoid any infection which in her case would have been lethal. This could have worked if the cancer had not already destroyed the lung
I can appreciate that the campaign of spoons food of liquid zips is something modest, but it conveyed considerable love. From breakfast time onwards I tried to include in the preparation food, high calories and high proteins supplements, which did not made the recipe of the breakfast cup a gourmet coffee, and came back a dozen of times because it was too hot, too cold had not enough sugar or too much and my deep joy was, when finally, she would drink the bowl of coffee with ensure. That care, so modest, was conducive of so much love. I was telling her that every food byte and liquid zip was a step towards healing. Likewise, caregivers were given their best because they knew that it would prevent a fatal infection.
Where, other Doctors by giving up would have stopped every treatment just prescribing anxiety medicine, that is morphine; leaving Maud during her last months to the sadness and anxiety of the inevitable while myself would have tried avoiding the mental countdown.
As Maud’s style was not to capitulate without a fight, he gave us reason for hope, expecting that Maud could benefit from six months to a year’s reprieve. Our small army continued its fight all day long and kept Maud’s hope. We did not lose hope until the last day, and we only lowered the colors two hours before her death.
After this first weeks I am trying to find a little serenity, without crying every half an hour; trying to realize that a life is like a book that we both wrote and which is, in all modesty, a very beautiful book and that one of authors drops the pen at the end of the writing of the book does make it a lesser beautiful book.
There is not much left to write, only a brief prologue which I will write, constantly thinking about her. Having said that it is easier said than felt.
As used to write a Serb Patriarch:
When we come to this world everybody rejoices only the newborn cries
At the end of a well-lived life
Everybody cries, only the deceased rejoices because he is going to a
better place
And I know that is Maud’s case
As a believer, I have no doubt that in the next future as I will be in my dead bed, I will see Maud coming back with her youth, beauty, her splendor, surrounded by light that she will give me her hand, raise me from the bed and both after a last glance to those we love and to the place and objects that we enjoyed so much, we will depart for the eternal life, hand in hand as when we were alive
