On All Saints’ Day, meditation can take many forms: religious ceremonies, friendly gatherings, visits to graves… Catherine and Piétro lost a son 8 years ago. Like every year, they will go to the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. A few days before, they went to take care of the plants; a way for them to be close to their son.
Detach withered and crumpled flowers, pull out weeds, repot a plant then plant a new one, prune, put your hands in the crumbly soil. Catherine and Piétro came to pray at the grave of their son Louis, who died at the age of 20, just over eight years ago.
“ When I arrive at the cemetery I rush to the plants. He is there, he is at Père-Lachaise, and it is as if he were manifesting himself through his flow of life, through the plant which grows, which moves, which dies, which lives. “, describes Catherine. “ On the grave, I occupy myself. I take care of him a little… Maybe it extends a care I gave him when he was alive “, explains Pietro.
In the depths of oneself
Because death can seem abstract, for Pietro, to take care of the burial is to materialize his mourning. ” Doing things, looking at the seasons that appear on the tomb… It helps to understand things – even if obviously it doesn’t help to understand death –, it avoids not understanding anything at all about what is happening “, does he think.
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“ Things are happening on his grave, we don’t know what is happening below, what is happening above… And in this interval, between the very deep and the very “up there”, there is has the little plants growing and this little concrete is doing good. It channels thoughts into something more serene », adds Pietro.
Sometimes Catherine talks in silence with her son Louis when she comes to meditate at the Père-Lachaise cemetery. ” Sometimes, I happen to do meditations in front of the tomb, but there again, I would say that I leave a little with his soul and therefore it is something very intimate. It’s deep inside, it’s a soul-to-soul relationship. It’s totally unspeakable “, she says.
” Contemplation is a feeling, a perception »
Marie de Hennezel’s latest book is called Living with the invisible. She has long been thinking about rituals around death. ” Contemplation is a feeling, it’s a perception explains Marie de Hennezel. “ It’s not a belief, it’s a feeling, a perception that the other is present, somewhere, in us and in fact it’s not supernatural at all, it’s very natural. We must speak of the dead and speak to them. It does require contemplation.. »
And meditation can be collective, testifies to Catherine who lost a 20-year-old son. ” I love going there together, it warms my heart. There, suddenly, not long ago, we played him a song that his Sicilian cousin wrote and we all listened together with him. »
And that’s how we slowly leave the cemetery with the image of an incredibly alive young boy.