By Stéphane Ségara

I still remember: I still have many memories of us, of our little family. But very few moments of love remain within, moments of you and me sharing such family-like caring and loving each other before death would make us lose our reasons (see original text. « lose the reason why we do so ? /forget why we do so ? ). As soon as I delve into those memories from when I was about 10, it comes to be so hard to describe our family relationship.

I still remember: we were like that kind of local nuclear family rooted in traditional principles and values. The kind that revolve around birthright, absolute obedience to parents – and, of course, good grades at school!

I still remember: we didn’t use to have many moments of interaction where we could share such love between parents and children. We were not allowed to express our feelings. By tacit agreement, we should not make them public.

I still remember: mom, who was very shy and quite sensitive, tried to profess her love to us, but it was not enough. She had her own way of loving that we often did not understand and found too distant. Through the illness that that would later take her away, I struggled to express my feelings of grief. I pretended to be indifferent and not worried about her situation but only because I was afraid that my feelings would be harshly suppressed. At times, when mom had her fainting spells, I would withdraw behind the house and just cry on my own – then I would go back in pretending I was all smiles again and stop any sort of feeling from showing through.

I still remember: dad was strict; he was tough in his actions. He would not tolerate any deviating behaviour. We all ended up being distant from him and would merely engage with him to show him our school grades. His attitude died down especially when mom became more and more sick and eventually passed away. But in my opinion, by that time it was already too late for us, hadn’t had enough time to build up « our own kind of  love ».

I still remember: during mom’s illness, I didn’t use to spend much time with her in order to avoid feeling pity for her all the time. One day, while she was all alone lying on the couch in the living room, she asked me to come and join her and to tell her some jokes (that was, by the way, something I really enjoyed doing with my friends).

My mom knew me very well… but I felt so shy and pitied her as I watched her getting thinner and weaker. At one point I couldn’t even say a word, so I stayed there and simply stared at her. That was our last private moment before she died a few weeks later.

I still remember: mom passed away and it was dad who told me. He would strongly condemn me when tears filled my eyes, because no one was supposed to see me cry. I had to be an example of bravery for my sister. I never did cry publicly, nor did I show my pain in public even though all eyes were on me on the day of mom’s funeral. It was as if everyone was expecting to see those tears rolling down my face. I still remember…

I still remember: the day we celebrated the first anniversary of mom’s death, dad had a fit and went completely out of his mind. He would never recover and died one week after. Looking back, I now realise how much he was affected by mom’s death and had never made it through his own period of grieving. He let alcohol destroy him. He never showed what his feelings and never looked sad. He was « an example of bravery ».

I still remember: following such custom of masking our feelings, I didn’t cry at my dad’s funeral either. No one stopped me from doing so, but I stopped myself from giving vent to my emotions. He passed away when I was 12.

I still remember: even though we spent so little time together, I can’t think of a single ‘deep feeling’ that was shown in the heart of our family. I can’t even remember the fact that we loved one another even though I felt we did.

I still remember: still today it’s hard for me to share my feelings. I feel ashamed for having feelings. I even feel ashamed of loving. It’s true that I’ve had the time to fix many things in me, but when it comes to feelings, this is something learnt at such an early age which follows us throughout our life. There’s no doubt.

With my sister there’s really nothing between us that would make us bottle up our feelings, but we are not that brave, we were just not taught such beautiful manners. I have then come to understand that loving is one thing, and expressing our love is something completely different…