I rose slowly, as though each step carried me a little further from the party, from the game, and from the illusion that everything could still work out. Without knowing it, I was also leaving a world in which hope still had the right to exist as I had known it.
What was waiting for me downstairs was not only going to answer my questions.
It was going to upend my life forever.
But I did not know that yet. I was simply wondering what their unannounced visit was about, so late at night, while I was at a friend’s place.
I excused myself to my hosts and told them I would be back in a moment, as I had to go down and see an older brother. They agreed. Neither they nor I knew then that the Martial going down those stairs would never again be the one who came back up.
I went down the steps unhurriedly. I pushed open the door of the building and found myself in the parking lot. A cold wind, typical of a Canadian winter, greeted me. But it was nothing next to what I was feeling inside.
I swept my eyes across the dark space and recognized it at once: their car, in the middle of the parking lot. I did not hurry. I walked over, my step heavy, and greeted them through the window on the passenger side. It was Joëlle I saw first.
Jean motioned for me to get in. I settled onto the back seat. I greeted them again, and the conversation began.
Jean: This is a long way from your place. What are you doing here?
Me: I had nothing planned. It’s a friend’s birthday, so I accepted her invitation.
Jean: All right. Sorry, but we’re going to have to leave together, please.
Me: Leave together? Is something wrong?
Jean: We need to talk to you, but not here.
While they were speaking, the silence from Lomé was as heavy as ever. I kept looking at my phone. No call would go through. No message was being delivered. Claudia. Roland. Reginald. At that precise moment, they were the whole Earth in my eyes. And they seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Inside the car, the tension rose.
Me: I can listen to you right here. My hosts can wait.
Jean: I understand, but talking to you in a car isn’t ideal.
Joëlle: Martial, you really do have to come with us.
Me: I came with people I have to drive home. I can’t just leave like that.
Jean: They’ll find a way to get home.
Me: No. I can’t. It wouldn’t be decent.
Jean then gave me a look I had never seen on him before.
Jean, in a grave tone: Martial, we’re done now. You’re going to get out of the car, go and say goodbye to your friends, apologize for not being able to drive them home, and leave with us right away.
In all the time I had known Jean, he had never spoken to me in that tone. I understood that the situation was serious. But I am stubborn by nature. I answered, raising my voice.
Me: What is going on? You turn up in the middle of the night, you drive all this way, you ask me to leave without explaining anything. Speak. What is going on?
Jean answered, his voice breaking, tears in his eyes:
Jean: Martial… YOUR MOTHER IS GONE.
Silence.
The world froze. Not a sound. Only Jean’s muffled sobs disturbed the air. As I write these lines, I still feel the shiver of that instant.
I looked out the window. My gaze empty. The darkness gave me no answer. I would have wanted to wind time back, to never have heard those words.
I got out of the car. I told them I would be right back. The first tears came as I climbed the stairs again.
When I walked back into the apartment, those who saw me understood at once that something terrible had just happened. I barely had time to tell my hosts that I had lost my mother, to apologize to my friend for not being able to drive her home as planned, and to say goodbye to the guests.
I went back down. I rejoined Jean and Joëlle. We left the place. I left my car where it was. I was in no state to drive, and they insisted that I stay with them.
It was only then that the line to Lomé came back. Claudia was crying. I was trying to comfort her while crying myself. It was she who, unable to find the strength to break the news to me, had entrusted that painful task to our couple of friends. Then I spoke to Roland, torn between grief and the weight of the formalities at the hospital. Then to Reginald. He had been reached on the road, on his way to pick up blood-glucose test strips. He had simply been told that there was no longer any need. Mom had just gone.
I did not sleep a wink that night at Jean and Joëlle’s.
The next day, Jean drove me to pick up my car. I could not begin to count the tears shed that day, and in the days that followed, every time I got behind the wheel. I played Someone You Loved by Lewis Capaldi on a loop. That song, without speaking of a son and his mother, captured what I was feeling: how hard it is to be all right without her, that sense of loneliness, of fragility, of loss. Because losing a mother (link) really does mean losing everything.
Later, I learned certain things about what unfolded that evening. Facts that are hard to hear. I will leave those episodes for another time, so as not to blur the thread of what I am telling here.
Since that evening, nothing has been exactly in its place. Time keeps moving forward, but something in me stayed frozen back there, in that parking lot, at the precise instant when everything shifted.
I live. I move forward. But from now on I carry an absence. Mom is gone, and yet she goes on inhabiting my silences, my fragilities, and that strange strength which allows me, in spite of everything, to keep going.
I have never really known how one learns to live after that. I only know that you keep going, differently. More slowly. With an empty place you no longer try to fill.
And every December 15, as today, quietly, I remember.
M. Z.
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