Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls

There is a small church near us in our commune of Latour. It's set up on an electric timer so the bells toll at 8am (time to wake up), noon (time to stop work and have a two hour lunch), and 7pm (time to stop work and drink an aperitif). I always feel as if I've missed something pure and sweet if I'm home and I don't hear the bells. If I follow the dictates of the bells, I shed my hyper-American personality, and take up the soft rhythm of rural France.

Sunday, I was returning from a long walk in the woods with Blanche, when we were walking by the cemetery that surrounds the Latour church. There was Monsieur Reste visiting the grave of his mother who died last Christmas Eve at the age of 103. He was watering the flowers he had planted at the family tomb, which he had refurbished last summer, and was talking to another man who also held a watering can.

When I stroll by the cemetery, I can read the family name plaques on the tombs . . . Couderc, Reste, Boudet, Besse, de Folmont . . . the names of all my neighbors and friends, and the de Folmont nobility that spawned my nemesis the Comte Theirry de Bersegol du Moulin de Fitzjames . . . who have a place reserved for them when even the French Paradox can't keep their bodies going any longer.

People here are very attached to their departed relatives. My neighbor Therese visits her late husband's grave every other day to water the flowers. He died five years ago. I suspect that she might be finding the visits a bit wearing now, because when I was visiting her last week she showed me a plant she was growing to put on Jean-Paul's tomb; a plant that doesn't require much water. I'll know she's found a new man when Jean-Paul's tomb is covered with cacti.

One of the Count's relatives has an impressive plaque. He was killed over in Bordeaux during the Revolution fighting for his family's right to claim superiority because of their birth. The Revolution wasn't as efficient as it has been portrayed and the ancestors of my litigious Count were able to escape the Terror and eventually relaxed, had sex, and thus guaranteed the continuation of a long line of arrogant SOB's to continue harassing peasants like me.

There are three sad plaques, two with photos, of young men killed in World War I, whose bodies were never recovered. One is Roger's uncle. They all say, "pray for him," at the bottom and then remind you that they "died for France." Based on who they left behind, the men are called "dear husband," "dear son," "dear brother," "dear father." These are the only epithets that have meaning when a man dies.

There is a grave with no gravestone. It simply has a massive, profuse, pink rosebush growing over, flooding out over the cemetery wall to hang over the road, attracting the attention of all who pass by. The rosier marks the resting place of a young (forties) Dutch woman who moved here, started a camping retreat, and then died of cancer. I have the same type of rose bush, "The Fairy," at my place, two of them, and they are puny things. When I see that huge feisty rose bush breaching the wall and road I feel as if the Dutch woman is calling out to me to tell me to stop and look at the beauty that is this rosebush, this beautiful life force that throbs around me and in me, yet, which I usually ignore because I have some mundane errand or work to complete.

Everyone, without exception, that I meet who has moved here from outside of France, says they moved here because of the "way of life," the joie de vivre, the emphasis on what's important in life: family, food, living in harmony. I have to think that this ability to clearly understand what makes the good life comes from their close proximity to death. The cemeteries, the war monuments, the plaques commemorating where people died, the walking funeral processions, the heads left on the dead rabbits in the market . . . when Therese has you over for dinner she kills one of her chickens . . .this acceptance of death is the reason they can create a life full of meaning and value.

We Americans avoid death at every turn. Our cemeteries are razed for housing developments, and are moved out of town, where the tombs are flush with the ground for easy mowing and they resemble golf courses, not a place of awe and intrigue where dead bodies rest.

Americans carry on a futile fight with the Grim Reaper that sucks away our money and our ability to accept, and enjoy, yes enjoy, the natural course of life. Here, old women ride their bicycles outfitted with "sidesaddles" to the supermarche. There are packs of seventy year old men rolling down the roads on their bikes. My divorced girlfriend was here from the U.S., and we were trailing behind one pack in the car. The men wore helmets so you couldn't see their gray and bald heads. She was marveling at how studly the men in France were. She was shocked when we passed them and saw how old the men were. You don't see packs of elderly, biker studs in the U.S. Americans are afraid of aging and death, and so we hide the elderly, and the elderly hide themselves when they feel they aren't good looking enough to go out in public. Here, I'm learning to accept aging by accepting life. This is all there is. Make the most of it . . . with the body you have.

I started these musings yesterday as I hung up laundry next to Olympia's bloating, fly-ridden body. The death beside me made life seem much more vibrant. My breathing seemed to me to be miraculous. The old wet towels and my ragged underwear were beautiful.

So here's my housekeeping tip for the day: rotting corpses on your property are much more effective than Zen rock gardens in helping you find your "center."