Not far into The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman, Didier Eribon quotes from this balladesque 1980 track by the French singer-songwriter Jean Ferrat:
We have to be reasonable
You can’t go on living like this
Alone if you fell sick
We would be so worried
You’ll see, you’ll be happy there
We’ll sort through your affairs
Find the photos you love
It’s strange that a whole life
Can be held in one hand
With the other residents
You’ll find lots to talk about
There’s a TV in your room
A pretty garden downstairs
With roses that bloom
In December as in June
You’ll see, you’ll be happy there
‘You’ll see, you’ll be happy there’ presents us with an adult gently addressing a parent about the latter’s imminent entry into a nursing home. For all that the speaker seeks to conjure pleasant scenes, and for all that his future tense verbs point confidently to new horizons, one can’t but feel that this move marks the onset of an ending.
The words, put to music by Ferrat, were ‘more or less the same words I said when it was my turn’, Eribon observes ruefully of his mother’s admission to one of France’s 7,500-odd ÉHPADs (or residential facilities for dependent elderly people):
It was as if I was reciting a text I had learned, the lines of a liturgy that so many others had chanted before and that so many others would repeat after me: a prayer book for sons and daughters with a parent whose life will be entirely changed from this decisive moment on.
The social scripts that we lean on, depart from and rewrite throughout our lives have long interested Eribon. Now 71 and a professor of sociology at the University of Amiens, he burst to the fore in 1989, after some years as a literary critic, with an acclaimed biography of the philosopher Michel Foucault.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in