In June this year, when I was passing through Paris on my way to Morocco, I went to visit MD's grave in Montparnasse Cemetery. Expecting to find a desolate, uncared for patch of sadness, I in fact walked past her grave several times, almost giving up, before I found it lovingly buried beneath a tombstone garden of plants, shells and pebbles.
The oddest thing was that MD's garden grave had a strange familiarity, and pretty soon I worked out why.
I could have been standing in my mother's garden. Marj had the same kinds of pot plants and creepers with sea shells, special rocks and stones, eagle feathers and wee nick-nacks sitting in amongst them.
She had native grasses we liked to call 'pussy willow grass' and wild flowers growing alongside roses, violets and forget-me-nots; flowers she could pick and press between the heavy pages of her old atlases and Encyclopedia Britanica.
To see that MD was so well looked after in the afterlife was heartening. I couldn't say the same for Simone De Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre who lay together a little further down the row, a single dead rose decomposing into a deserted marble slab.
You get the feeling that after a lifetime of living and writing 'the pain', MD is truly R.I.P
(c) Jan Cornall 2013
Jan Cornall began writing in the 70s. She has written plays, musicals, screenplays, a novel, short stories, and three CDs of songs. Since 2004 she has led writer's retreats in inspirational international locations including Bali, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, Morocco and Fiji. In 2014 she is planning a Vietnam trip following the footsteps of M.Duras in Vietnam. More info here.
I could have been standing in my mother's garden. Marj had the same kinds of pot plants and creepers with sea shells, special rocks and stones, eagle feathers and wee nick-nacks sitting in amongst them.
To see that MD was so well looked after in the afterlife was heartening. I couldn't say the same for Simone De Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre who lay together a little further down the row, a single dead rose decomposing into a deserted marble slab.
You get the feeling that after a lifetime of living and writing 'the pain', MD is truly R.I.P
(c) Jan Cornall 2013
Jan Cornall began writing in the 70s. She has written plays, musicals, screenplays, a novel, short stories, and three CDs of songs. Since 2004 she has led writer's retreats in inspirational international locations including Bali, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, Morocco and Fiji. In 2014 she is planning a Vietnam trip following the footsteps of M.Duras in Vietnam. More info here.
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