Well. I never thought I’d be sharing this but after 6 weeks of reflecting I came to the conclusion that experiences are also there to be shared. I am finding it very hard to write about something so personal, so deeply hidden under layers of protection, built and reinforced year after year. But at the same time, It occurred to me that I have myself been many times inspired by things that people have shared about their own journeys and their own hardships, it has truly helped me take some perspective.

We have all been stuck at home waiting for this crisis to pass for a month and a half now. First, the shock, then impatience, and then maybe time to reflect. It’s not that easy to sink into your inner self and just look at what’s there. Being active gives us an excuse to push that stuff aside for later or for never. I have started opening that little door to my inside a couple of years back, and have found it really powerful. Profoundly disturbing as well as deeply soothing. A constant fight between your inner voice and everything that you’ve learned to be, to see in a certain way, to believe. Not a peaceful, shiny and colourful journey that’s ready to be posted on Instagram, but still the one and only, as I see it. 

Just before the lockdown, I had a call from my brother. I can’t really remember exactly when, some day in the first week of March. He lives outside France, so we only get to see each other once or twice a year - not that we live that far appart, but we are all busy with that “normal life” sucking us up. So we stay in touch by phone. But this call was different.

Actually, it was my brother’s partner who called me. She is a great person. I am so glad to have her as a sister in law. She was often the one calling so I was not surprised to see her name displayed on my screen that evening instead of my brother's. It was just before supper and I was standing in the kitchen. I wasn’t expecting anything like the news that she was about to reveal. â€œYour mother is not well” she said. I knew my mother was not in her best shape as she has been in a depression for years. Besides, she had been sent to hospital a week before as she had fell over in her apartment. She had moved into a new apartment last September. That had been a very difficult move as it is often the case when people who have spent their whole life in a place have to move and readjust to something smaller, more practical. 

My mother was lost in denial and in heaps of boxes which she still had not gone round emptying. Those boxes are full of stuff from that life in the house she did not want to leave. Objects reminding her of what she has lost. Of a previous life that will not come back. All those things stored away, lurking at her from those cartons, whispering at her ears everything that would never be hers anymore, loud whispers coming from behind the cardboard flaps. She knows she is too tired to build a new life, she cannot let go of these ghosts of the past, even if keeping them means letting them haunt her forever. She is trapped between yesterday and now. She was depressed in that new flat and she was not eating well. She fell over from dizziness. And off she was for hospital, to get back on her feet. 

I hate hospitals. Everybody hates hospitals. But at least at hospital she would be taken care of I thought, and maybe the stay could help her get back on track and find a bit of energy for the life in the new apartment? I wasn’t really convinced by that thought but at least the nurses would check on her and make sure she eats a bit more. Perfusion is not exactly the most poetic road to accepting change and finding piece but sometimes it can be a trigger. After the “Hi there, how are you doing?” and the brief introduction on my mother's condition, she went straight to the point. “Look, I’m sorry I have to drop this at you like that, but we just got to know that your mother has cancer, and it’s bad.” 

At this point I am thrown into an immense whirl of silence. Of darkness. Lights off, sound off. The only thing I can feel and hear is my heartbeat, beating faster and faster. It is resonating like a huge drum in my chest. I just manage to say “oh”, to let her know that I have heard what she just said, so she tells me a little more. It’s in the pancreas. Metastasised to the liver and heading towards the stomach. It is not going to get better. She is too weak for chemo. Tomorrow she will be moved to palliative care. 

I have a complex relationship with my mother. It has always been a battlefield as far as I can remember. Last time I visited her was just before her moving out and it had been a difficult moment. I could feel that misery inside her, the same one that had been slowly eating her up for all these years except that it had completely outgrown her. There was no space at all left for her, it was all misery. We talked about pre-move logistics and all sorts of non interesting things. Unimportant things. It was all very surreal and so uncomfortable. I had felt then that she had thrown away her Ariadne’s thread, she didn’t want to find the way back to the light. And now that misery has really eaten her up from the inside, starting with the pancreas, the very organ which function is to digest things. That hidden gland that helps you break down the food into nutriments and regulate blood sugar levels. I find this highly symbolic of her life somehow.

So here I am with this piece of news, struggling to find how I should handle it. Emotions of all kinds are fusing in my head and I can still hear that drum beating inside, urging me to react. I had just opened Bloomdrops a week before. I was feeling like a trainee at her first internship. I was happy, pumped up, scared to death and completely overwhelmed. And now I was also dazed and sad and confused at the same time. I had this weird sense of pressure on my chest but Bloomdrops had kept me busy the morning after the bad news. I hadn't slept much and was starting to feel tired, looking forward to lunch break. At 12 o'clock I lock the door and pull the curtain down a little. It's silent. I am standing behind my little counter, the drumming is getting louder. I have to call my mother. I was too shaken up last night to call her, and anyway it would have been too late to call, she is sharing a room with another lady. 

It’s another awkward conversation, she seems very weak, dizzy. I can’t make out whether she understands me when I am speaking, the reception on her mobile is bad. I'm not at all sure she fully realises what is happening to her, nor if she realises that she will be moved to a different place the next day. Morphine at work probably. This has been so fast... Lats time I spoke to her she was getting better after a fall and now she's terminally ill. I hang up and book tickets to fly over and visit her in hospital. I will be staying at my brother's, so I call my sister in law to let her know I’ll be flying in on March 29th. Now I am writing this I realise it was exactly 1 month after my opening, which took place on February 29th. Well, that was before the lockdown. A few days later we are all told we have to stay home to avoid the spread of the virus. Schools had been closed and now shops and restaurants were asked to close too. 

Everybody is locked at home and has to work from there when possible, deal with what can be dealt with digitally, from a distance. I get the email from the airline company apologising for the flight cancellation and offering to reschedule my flight “for a later date”. Nobody knows what "later date" means. Nobody can count to “later” and nobody can evaluate if “later" will at all mean anything by the time a date is set. Hospitals are not allowing any visits, so even if I could have flown it would have been useless anyway. So now my mother is alone with her misery. She has not been able to take the train to digital as she has lost faith in herself and let fear take over a long time ago. So skype or even emails are not an option to stay in touch. She is completely locked out of life, both emotionally and physically. Rarely have I felt so helpless, sad and frustrated at the same time. But as difficult as it is to accept, there is nothing I can do about that, except wait for that "later date" to be set. Hoping it will not be too late.

The only option I found in between is to write my mother a letter and post it to her. So I have written a long letter, with a pen and sheets of lined paper, you know, like we used to do. It took me a whole day to write it, and I cannot be sure she will be able to read it but that is the only thing I can do right now. To me, this crisis we are experiencing is so much more than an economical, social and healthcare crisis. It is a huge slap in the face and it is stirring up plenty of feelings that I had buried deep down. I know it will leave profound scars to many people living difficult situations, nevertheless, I still want to believe that, just like when we fail, it is giving us the chance to face things and think differently. To reflect at what has been, what is and what we can do with that, and start moving towards what we want next. To see what we tried and failed as something meant to help us set the new cadence. 

As this highly distinguished quote rightly states: "shit happens". So let's turn that into something meaningful, into that thing called understanding or experience, so we can use it to make better choices or have better reactions next time. What this crisis and my mother's condition are showing me, is that we should use our energy to adapt rather than to resist and fight to keep what has been. There are so many ways of living and thinking, a model is just there to show one way, at a given moment in a given context. With this crisis, we have to accept things that we would never have been ready for. There are things you are just NEVER ready for, but they invite themselves to the party and throwing them out will not help as they will keep knocking, driving you crazy and anyway they'll find a way to get in through the windows when you're not watching. 

I wanted to share my mother’s story because this has finished convincing me that whatever happens, the only way forward is to adapt and move on. Don’t try to go back to something that once was before, or stick to a thought that you've had so far. That will never work for the simple reason that the world is constantly changing. It just cannot work to hold on to what you have once built or thought or what you have felt. Building walls to keep everything as it once was and refusing change when it comes is not a viable option as everything around is in movement. Whether you like that movement or not, you don’t choose it, it's there and it's stronger than anything you will put into place. You can only choose how you react to what is happening, and decide in which way you want to adapt. Because in the end, if you don’t bend, you break.