By Mihir Srivastava
Thomas Ellis is a bespectacled French man with a certain charm. He was integral to Delhi life for ten long years, and of so many things he did in Delhi, the rooftop parties he hosted were memorable. He set up a production house employing dozens of people and did some great stories and made documentaries and films. After a long stint in Delhi as a base, he shifted back to his hometown Marseille. I fondly recollect visiting his home in Delhi to appreciate how well he organises his space, and life in general, the friends he made (including me) and travels he undertook. And made India truely his home.
He went back five years ago and renovated his home in Marseille to create his quintessential space, with some Indian furniture, and has since been living there with his girlfriend and her two children–he loves them like his own.
Since the pandemic paralysed the world he has been mostly incommunicado. There was a significant shift happening in his life. And how he dealt with it is fairly unheard of in the European context. He stopped working in mid 2019 for eight long months to tend to his maternal grandmother, Monique Vadon, who was terminally ill. And those eight months was an ongoing party to celebrate her life.
Thomas cried for days when he learned from the doctors attending to Monique that her days are numbered. And then he quit working to take care of her along with her sister. “I quit work to be with her,” Thomas says without hesitation, there was no other way, it was an intuitive decision.
He narrated these significant months while walking from his home to work in Marseille, less than a kilometre apart. He held the phone facing the sky. I saw his face from below, and the blue sky in the backdrop, he talked looking ahead as he ambled to work. The twittering of birds was loud, they too seem to be telling a heartwarming story of their life with much joy. Thomas was speaking effortlessly–words came out quick and fast–and did get a shade sentimental a few times. Finally, he sat down on the steps of his office, and after a sigh, resumed talking. There were moments when, momentarily, tears flooded his eyes and shined like pearls in the morning sun.
The last few weeks of Monique’s life were spent in the hospital. Thomas and his partner, his younger sister, her husband, and the kids, lived in the hospital for weeks together. They would sleep on the floor, and be with Monique all the time, talking to her, remembering a life well spent, rejoicing with her, and experiencing the sheer joy of being by her side. They’d even order food and eat in her hospital room.
The doctor attending Monique, 88, an oncologist, was rather bemused. A whole family staying with an elderly woman in the hospital is not a usual practice. And their staying here wouldn’t change the situation, but it will make Monique happy, feel loved.
Monique, in any case, “had no fear of death,” says Thomas. Their stay was a quality family time “full of love moments…was the best time of my life,” he says with no hesitation, and I know he’s had a fairly eventful life. And they weren’t in denial that the end was near, nor sad, for they with her were celebrating a life well spent.
They looked at the old photo albums, often. Her life long before Thomas was born came alive before his eyes like a bioscope playing the past in sepia tone.
Monique belonged to a wealthy family. Independent by temperament, and a rebel by choice, she was not very happy in the way her family existed. In the long phase of uncertainty that followed the War, Monique found the love of her life, Jean Vadon, a bright student of law from a poor family.
They, after a few years of courtship, decided to get married. Monique’s family was against the marriage, so when it actually happened there were only six people in attendance–including the bride and the groom. Monique remained a great support to her husband, and was an equal partner in helping him build a lucrative career in law.
Jean was a linguist of sorts, proficiency in English language for a lawyer in Marseille was a rarity in those days. Jean did many cases in the post War scenarios involving the British people and other English speaking countries. He did well professionally, and also helped people as a humanist. His contribution was recognised later by Queen Elizabeth of England. Jean was bestowed with the prestigious Order of the British Empire British– a reward for contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. Jean went on to become a leading light in the city of Marseille.
In one of many such cases, he helped a Canadian woman get divorce from an abusive French husband so that she could go back home. The disgruntled husband, an alcoholic, barged into Jean's house with a shotgun and threatened to kill him. Thomas–was a three year old kid, his mother and Jean were at home. His mother threw Thomas out of the window to be taken to a neighbour's place, which, to this day he remembers, was inhabited by a dozen cats (he was not there before and will not go there ever after, but after 30 years he meets a man who owned that very house and confirmed that his grandfather indeed had many many cats). The armed intruder allowed Thomas’s mother to leave, the police arrived but wasn’t allowed inside the house, and after prolonged negotiations the intruder left without causing any mortal harm to Jean.
But this incident affected Jean in a psychological way, something shifted inside of him. Some years later he died. Thomas’s mother was very attached to Jean, her father. She didn’t survive long after him. Thomas was barely 15 years old when he lost his mother. Monique took care of Thomas, he became a man under the shade of the umbrella of her love. A lifetime was lived in flashes many times with Monique in the hospital room. They were partying, had many wine-ful evenings.
In the last week of her life, there was a party on Friday, again. The next day her condition deteriorated, Monique was put on life support, she was suffering but unconscious, breathing loudly. “We love you very much and it's time to go, please go, and enjoy your life in the other world,” Thomas and others told her.
“There was love and lots of love,” Thomas reasserts many times–such situations are difficult to put into words. She was clinging on to life, and wouldn’t go. Death was also bemused. Love makes life sticky. On Sunday, her condition deteriorated further, and they thought, perhaps, she needs privacy in the last moments of her life, so they all went to watch a movie, fairly sure that by the time they'll return Monique would be gone to the other world.
When they came back, she was still very much there. They implored her to go and be happy in the other world, again.
The next day, on Monday morning, March 9, 2020, it was Jean’s birthday. She started breathing heavily with much effort. They held her hand, and gradually she stopped breathing, and her body started getting colder. She was gone. “She left holding my hand,” says Thomas.
With the same gusto of planning a wedding, Monique, with her grandchildren by her side, planned her funeral, immaculately, to the last detail. She had certain specific ideas, strong likes and dislikes. After a bit of initial indecisiveness, she chose the music to be played at her funeral. A happy music: Ouvertüre–Mary Poppins by Richard M. Sherman. She didn’t want flowers on her coffin. So the family pulled out vegetation from her garden that was very dear to her and tended it for many years, and rolled it together and nailed it on the coffin, some of it was done while she was inside. The coffin looked like it was clothed with the verdure of midsummer.
As per her wish, Monique was cremated and not buried. An exception was made to allow the whole coffin with the thick foliage cover in the furnace. There were dozens of people in attendance at her funeral despite the Covid scare, men and women of all age groups, half of them weren’t even known to the family. They were friends made while she took English classes. To their credit, both Jean and Monique were linguists in their own right and spoke many languages, and never really stopped learning a new one.
She returned to her home in the outskirts of Marseille as a pot of ashes.
A week after her funeral, France went under lockdown with Covid raging. Thomas, his girlfriend, her two children, his sister, her partner, and their two children lived in Monique’s house, locked up for 40 days. They didn’t feel her passing, but a constant presence. She was there–the ashes.
It was Monique’s desire that her ashes be sprinkled on the sea from atop a cliff not far from her house. Thomas wants to do it in the presence of her three best friends, it hasn’t happened yet, but soon.
Death gives perspective to life and is not to be feared. Death is the time to celebrate life. And that’s what Thomas and his family did. As someone beautifully said, Love is stronger than death even though it can’t stop death from happening, but no matter how hard death tries it can’t separate people from love. It can’t take away our memories either.”
Nice Blog