A TRIBUTE

Dressed in a pink housecoat, she waved at us from the back door of our house in Wellington.  We’d just spent a wonderful Christmas together and I was anxious to complete the last semester of my MBA program at Université Laval and come home to my beloved Island.  She’d had a few tough years health-wise but was turning the corner.  She was as happy that Christmas as we’d seen her in many years.  On our third day back in Sainte-Foy, my life changed forever.

It’s Friday afternoon and I’ve just come in the door exhausted, after a full day practicing with the Laval team for the National MBA competition and the long walk from campus to our apartment.  I greet Elva and the children and barely have time to sit down to talk about how everyone’s day went.  The phone rings.  “C’est pour toi,” Elva says.  “C’est Père Albin.”  “Why would he be calling on a Friday afternoon?” I ask myself.

He begins by saying: “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but your mother was stuck and killed this afternoon by a drunk driver.”  I don’t remember much more of what he said: a few of the details maybe about how Mom died; what’s happening with the coroner’s office and the police investigation; who the driver was; when we’d arrive home.  I morph into Pater familias mode, taking charge, trying to stay strong.  The next week or so brings a series of intense experiences I’ll never forget.

Elva and I sit Sylvie, Clément and Jacques down to tell them the terrible news.  They’re 9, 7 and 5, respectively.  We all cry.  I try to sleep.  The next morning, we pile into the Dodge Caravan for a long quiet ride back to the Island.  Me on auto-pilot; a thousand things running through my mind.  Twenty-five years ago today, and it seems like yesterday.

As the days went by, each of us experienced the tragedy in our own way.  And I’m sure each of us has a slightly different recollection of events as they played out.  This is what I remember.

Mom raised me by herself during a time when being a single mother was frowned upon, almost taboo really.  My father left us before I had formed any memory of him.  Maybe it had been for the best, most people said.  She had to make a career for herself.  Find a job and support her aging mother and young son. 

 

The directors of the Wellington Coop took a chance and hired her in 1958 to manage their pitiful little store.  She stuck with it and helped transform it into a successful business, serving the members and directors until ill health forced her retire in 1979.  It was then that Elva and I moved in with her.  Our three children spent their first years in her house. 

The picture below shows her at a Maritime Coop Manager's Conference.  For most of the years she attended, she was the only woman.

 

Yvonne Gaudet was born into a comparatively well-off Acadian family.  Her father, Emmanuel, was a partner in Arsenault & Gaudet, Ltd., a successful mercantile business.  One of three sisters, her formative years were all frilly dresses and music lessons, boyfriends, family cookouts at the ‘shore’, summer school, and dancing with airmen training to become World War II pilots at RCAF Station Mount Pleasant. 

 

Approaching ‘old-maid’ territory, she married professor-politician Wilfred Arsenault when she was 33 and he 44.  They had one child: me.

Except at Christmastime, I never missed having a father or brothers and sisters.  Mom let me do my thing - for the most part - and I owe my independent streak and débrouillardise entirely to her.  She seldom questioned my life decisions.  When anyone asked her if she was proud of her son, she always answered the same way: “He did alright for the chance he had, I guess.”

We drove into the yard in Wellington around suppertime on Saturday.  Everywhere I looked in the house, something reminded me of Mom: her plants; half‑finished knitting; the TV table where she’d eaten her last meal; the lunch dishes soaking in the sink; even a dried-out apple core.

I couldn’t get over how empty the house felt when I first walked in.  I was overcome with a sense of time standing still.  Family members came to visit over the next few days and did what they could to help, including supplying enough food to feed a small army for a month!

After the obligatory visit to the funeral home, Elva and I retraced Mom’s last steps, up the Mont-Carmel Road to the very spot where the driver of the vehicle fell asleep and struck her.  I imagined the horror she must have experienced during the last seconds of her life, facing the car and knowing it was coming straight at her.  She must have frozen, unable to move out of the way.  That image, more than any other, haunted me.

The next days were an emotional roller-coaster.  At the end of it we were totally drained.  The loss of a loved one in tragic circumstances must truly rank as one of life’s most intense experiences. 

Memories: the many people who came to the funeral home to pay their respects and, especially, those we didn’t expect to see; the many errands people did and offered to do without our having to ask; and the crowded church on the day of the funeral.  Father Albin’s heartfelt sermon, spoken directly to Sylvie, Clément and Jacques, left not a dry eye in the place.  One special memory is the sight of my former Forestry Branch colleagues, all standing in dress uniform as my family walked out of the church together.

As we sat in my in-laws’ kitchen later that day, reminiscing and trying to come back to earth, a thought crept into my mind and wouldn’t leave me.  I had to go see Cédric, the man who’d killed my mother.  And I had to do it that very afternoon.  I knew him, though not well.  We’d played hockey against one another and his wife was a high school classmate.  He wasn’t a bad person, just a man with a drinking problem that led to tragic consequences.

I took Father Albin aside and asked him to accompany me.  I phoned Cédric’s home and was told that our visit would be welcomed.  He and his wife were distraught.  His remorse was evident.  He told me he hadn’t the strength to face us.  Before leaving, I told him I forgave him.  We hugged; one man with another.  At that moment, all anger and bitterness left me.

My visit with Cédric and Zita ranks as one of the best things I’ve done in my life.  It wasn’t until later I’d realize that forgiving the man who killed my mother is also one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.  It made healing faster.

The other great life lesson from such a terrible experience is that one must try to take it all in.  Every part of it.  There is much to be learned about the self, and about others who travel the same road.  Everyone handles death in a different way, some better than others.  And the little ones understand far more of what’s going on than we think.

Were she still alive, Mom would be 97 now.  Longevity was in her genes and she was in good health at the time of her death.  People said to me in a sincere attempt at a comforting message: “She lived a long life, you know.”  And I’d be thinking: “Maybe so, but she was no different than any of us.  She had the rest of her life to live.”  In retrospect, how many music festivals missed?  How many hockey games?  Three wonderful weddings, and so many other family gatherings held without her there.

I think of her often.  Of her strength in the face of hardship; the same strength that made me visit Cédric on the day we buried her.  How she never took shit from anybody.  How she loved a party!  The love she had for friends and family.  How good a job she did raising me.  How her example helped me get over her death, and go on with mine.

REST IN PEACE, MOM

I’LL ALWAYS LOVE YOU