Adieu, Chip

When I learned Chip had French ancestry, I felt elated. When I discovered he could speak French and that we could use it as a way to communicate in sweet ways to each other, it was part of what made me feel more deeply connected to him than I thought possible (We were so different in many ways, but the things that connected us bound us deeply together). He would often spontaneously respond in French to a text of mine (that I sent in English) during the work day, and we would continue in our rusty French until we were together again after work. Our joint appreciation for and interest in the French language and culture was a bond we shared, and it was a great one.

My interest in the French language and culture cannot really be explained. It began early in my life for no apparent reason. I have no French ancestry. Growing up in a small town in Ohio, I didn’t know anyone who was French. Everyone, as far as I knew, was ”American” with some German, Polish or Italian heritage.

But, as time went by, my interest in all things French grew and grew. I chose French as the language to study in high school and, after my 9th grade year, I started a French “summer camp” on my parents’ back porch in the house I grew up in Independence, Ohio. To find campers, I hung flyers at the local library advertising a “French camp” experience for an hour-and-a-half each week for 4 (or was it 6?) weeks. Several families with 6-10 year old children took me up on my offer to teach their children simple French and to expose them to French culture (With hindsight, I think they saw actually saw the camp as glorified babysitting for their kids). My mom roped in my youngest brother Joe as well as my cousins Natalie and Renee from next door to fill out the camp experience. I can’t recall how much I charged or if I made much of a profit after my costs (My mom said she remembers that I used Richard Scarry’s European Word Book: English-French-German to teach vocabulary), but I remember feeling like I was simply meant to do the work of exposing others to the French language and culture.

My strong interest in all things French continued throughout my studies in high school, while traveling to Paris with my mom and my aunt after my junior year of high school, and as a French minor at Georgetown University (In one class I had to translate a huge portion of one of the Gospels and pick apart/analyze the grammar of it…and I loved every minute of it!), and my interest continues right through present-day. When I assist Stella and Sam with their French studies in their partial French immersion programs at their Fairfax County public schools, I am happy. As all things French can always lift my mood, I follow a few French people as well as Le Monde, a French daily newspaper, on Twitter, and I challenge myself to see how much I can comprehend (before resorting to Google Translate). When Calli was home from France this summer, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on her phone conversations with her boyfriend in Rouen, France in order to listen for sweet words and phrases that Chip and I would have used, such as “Mon Amour” or “Je t’ adore.”

On my drive to Ohio three days ago, I put on my Spotify playlist titled “My Darling Husband” for the entire 6-hour ride. Many of the songs are in French, by artists such as Coeur de Pirate and Slimane. I learned of Coeur de Pirate from Calli, when she studied French in high school. I learned of Slimane from Florian, our French intern who lived with us in McLean from February to March, 2018. I sing along to the songs I know well and listen carefully to learn the words of songs I have yet to sing.

The song “L’Adieu” played somewhere in the middle of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Tears flowed when Anne Sila, who performs the song, belted out the word “adieu.” There are many ways to say “good bye” in French, but “au revoir” and “adieu” are common (Calli and Thomas say goodbye at the end of their phone conversations by saying “Bisous!,” which means “kisses.”). “Au revoir” is used as a general farewell when saying goodbye to someone you will see again soon, while “adieu” is used when saying goodbye to someone you will not see again for a long time or when you’re unsure if you will ever see them again. The word “adieu” contains the word “dieu” (God) and originates from the longer Old French phrase “a Dieu vous comant,” meaning “I commend you to God” (Calli taught me how to put French accent marks using strokes on my keyboard, but I’m blanking on the way to do it now, so I’m skipping the step).

One chilly day in our kitchen on Dean Drive (where Chip and I first lived together), our intern Florian turned me onto the song “L’ adieu,” which is on the soundtrack of the musical “Jésus, de Nazareth à Jérusalem.” I was struck in the moment how moved Florian was by the song since he shared freely with me that he was an avowed atheist. He explained to me as the song played that the lyrics of the song reveal Mary’s pain and sorrow as she says a final goodbye to Jesus. As I struggled to understand each phrase and sentence in the lyrics, I was distracted by the fact that Florian was so moved by Mary’s lamentations for her son’s death (I asked if his parents were religious and he said they were not religious and the topic was never discussed growing up). What I didn’t realize at the time I first hard the song is that loss is loss, after all, and perhaps Florian had known the universal feeling of loss from losing a grandparent or a family pet (I stay in touch with him and I will ask him why the song moves him so much).

Sila’s emotional performance when singing “adieu” (You can watch her acoustic session performance here) has always stirred me deeply since I could imagine the pain of losing a child, but now it moves me even more deeply after having said my final goodbye to Chip in the funeral parlor on June 1. I have never known the pain of such a loss, and it is truly the hardest thing I have ever endured in my life.

Although my earthly goodbye to Chip felt so final (about 36 hours after he had died), I am working daily on saying (and singing) “adieu” with more peace in my heart and mind. I am working on thinking of “adieu” more as “I don’t know when I’ll see you again, but I know I will” and “I commend you to God” rather than as “I will not see you again.” It’s work in progress, and I believe listening to “L’adieu” will help me along my journey to accepting that Chip is gone.