An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.
WE LEFT COLLIOURE feeling like fools. We did manage to have lunch in Perpignan, which was a miracle. With our impeccable timing, we usually arrive at a restaurant right after they’ve stopped serving the midday meal.
Today we were off to the Camargue. On our six-week trip to France a few years back I’d wanted to stop there but we couldn’t fit it in. Now we were making a special visit, even though the Camargue had nothing whatsoever to do with Monsieur Matisse. It was, at least, on the way to more Matisse country—Cassis, St. Tropez, and Nice.
Image by Wolfgang Staudt via Flickr
Driving along La Grand Motte was like driving the Gulf Coast of Florida—heavy traffic, high rise hotels, azure oceans and skies. We knew we’d crossed over and were in French cowboy country when we started seeing one stable after another, with the white Camargue horses pacing their corrals, or saddled up with people taking trail rides. These horses have an Arabian look about them, and the Camargue resembles the American plains—wide, flat, and dusty, though the French West has one thing its American counterpart does not have, and that is tons and tons of salt. (Not to mention the flamingoes.)
There are two festivals for the Marys in May and October that I’d love to attend, but the one I’m really dying to hit is the one in May—because that’s when gypsies from around the world come to pay their respects to their patron saint, the aforementioned Sara. There are bullfights, horse races, and flamenco dancing. And with all the gypsies, what a spectacle! Jim seemed less enthusiastic than I.
For the next few nights we were staying at the Hotel de Cacheral, a Camarguais version of the Ponderosa. The owner’s house and the bunk houses where the guests stay were whitewashed and looked out on salt marshes where hundreds of pink flamingoes made a surreal installation in the deep blue of the sky and water below them. Jim and I walked out to the marsh to get a better look at the birds, a herd of white horses being fed with hay, and the Camarguais black cattle with horns. We signed up for a trail ride the next morning.
After dark we went into the village and ate a wonderful dinner of taureau steak (the black cattle). The beef was tasty and had a tang of the wild. Later, in our hotel room, we lit the three candles we’d been carrying with us since Lourdes. We said prayers for our loved ones and went to bed.
That night the wind blew so hard it rattled the walls. I heard the roar, though slept fine. But Jim was awake almost all night. He said he thought it was going to blow the house down.
It was 7:15 A.M. when our phone rang. My brother, Blair, was calling to tell me that he had some really horrible news: Our mother was dead. He gave me the details, which I didn’t really hear. I guess the words went in my ears—the syllables, the phrases—but there was no comprehension. I simply couldn’t believe it. My mother was dead.
When my father died at 42—almost 34 years before—it was also an awful trauma. His death was an accident—he was scuba diving with a new contraption that was all the rage, an air compressor that floated on top of the water with hose and mask connected to the diver underneath. He was spear fishing, and we believe he was after a big one. He went down too far, the compressor turned over, and he came up too fast. It was a Sunday afternoon, and our neighbor called to tell us that he’d heard Daddy had died at the lake. I was 15 at the time and paced the family room wringing my hands, worrying about the teenage flak that had been flying between us. My mother, Bobbye Ann, said, “Maybe it’s not true.” But in a few minutes we saw our minister pulling into the driveway.
That had been a Sunday afternoon in August. This was an April Sunday morning—for me; a Saturday night for Mother—a week before my birthday and what would’ve been my parents' 51st wedding anniversary, if they had lived. (Bill and Bobbye Arnold pictured on right, circa 1960's)
We didn’t expect this phone call. Does one ever? Even when my younger brother, Brent, died in 1990 of AIDS, we didn’t expect his death at the time that it came. I hoped beyond hope that his body could find a way to beat this illness and live. Today he probably could have, but not then.
Bobbye Ann had high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and she did need to lose weight, but she lived a busy, vital life and looked beautiful. People never thought she was as old as her 74 years. She always told us she would die young. Her father and brother passed on in their 50’s with heart attacks, and her father’s mother, her favorite grandmother with whom she’d spent lots of time, did too. Of the others—the women—my mother’s mother is still living at 96, and her mother lived into her 90’s as well. Bobbye Ann always told us her mother would outlive her, but we just pooh-poohed. We thought she had the long-life genes. Did she know, or had she created her own reality? Perhaps it was simply time for her soul to go. The time she’d contracted for when she came into this life was done. Mission accomplished. All her lessons learned.
A doctor friend of mine thought death was random, but then he killed himself. There was no randomness to that.
Basically, what I found out later was that Mother had called Blair and told him she didn’t feel well. She had a headache (which she never had) and was sweating. He offered to take her to the ER, but she said no and took an aspirin. When he talked to her a short time later, she said she felt better. Then he heard her hit the floor. The paramedics said she probably died instantly. A couple of doctor friends of ours said it sounded like an aneurysm.
Jim had been right about the raging wind that howled the night before. It had blown our house down.
Beth Arnold
Camargue, France
April, 2003
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Unless otherwise indicated, photos by Beth Arnold. Not subject to use without permission.
Beth Arnold lives and writes in Paris, where she produces her "Letter From Paris" new media project.
You can find the Chasing Matisse book by James Morgan here at Amazon--or you can find it in or order it from your favorite book store.
Jours of Our Lives illlustration by artist (and couturier) Elizabeth Cannon. To find out more about her, click here.
