DANIEL C. GUIET
I first cried for my father’s passing the moment that I knew his journey was complete. It was four months after his death.
As we had been doing for years, my wife, Carol, and I had returned to the Jura, in eastern France, to spend time at our home, located just minutes from the house where Jean Claude had spent childhood summers with Grandmère. Dad was a quiet, self-contained, and in some ways mysterious man, but he always seemed to soften when he recalled the serene times he spent among the Conliège villagers before the Nazi invasion.
That July early morning was already hot. The deep blue sky was dotted by low-hanging cotton-ball clouds, creating the impression of a ceiling over the wide, vibrantly green pastures surrounding the town. The fields were bordered by high, nearly vertical rock ridges.
We drove up rue Haute, the narrow main street of Conliège. Towering row houses built within a foot of the curb, with front doors opening virtually into the street, blocked the sun. We squeezed past a few villagers carrying baguettes home from the tiny patisserie.
Turning left up a short, steep, seldom-used dirt path, we climbed to the Belvedere, a spot with a commanding view, a natural terrace held in place by a large rock retaining wall cut into the face of the steep hillside. The terrace was bordered by a rusting single iron rail mounted on its outer edge to prevent a misstep. The village lay below; we could see Grandmère’s large home near its center. In the distance, church bells chimed softly, eight times.
Just above us was the Chapel of Sainte-Anne—an old, stone, single-story structure—and, adjacent to it, a small stone building known as the Hermitage. In centuries past it had been inhabited by a lookout, meagerly supported by the village, who lived practically as a hermit. He kept watch over the herds in the meadows below, and sounded an alarm in the event of approaching strangers, or fire. Looking southwest the sharp canyon opened, softening into an expansive plain that sloped gently down to the Ain River.
Leaning gently on the iron rail, we located a spot on the outer edge of the terrace that permitted a look down into the large courtyard of Grandmère’s home. It was easy to locate Dad’s bedroom window, and to imagine him as a child looking up from it at the prominent Belvedere. We could see the massive wooden gates that provided access to the large courtyard and out through the back to the pastureland behind the house.
Above and below us birds glided by. Carol and I hugged. I began tearing up as I leaned over the rail—although I had to smile as I caught myself automatically checking the direction of the light breeze, a reflex handed down from my father, who taught me to sail. Jean Claude was a loving, kind, and attentive man. He had a quick wit and loved reading. He always kept a small vegetable garden no matter where we lived, and it never had any dandelions in it—Jean Claude found that his Fairbairn-Sykes dagger was just the right length for slicing their roots, four inches down, before lifting them out of the soil.
Jean Claude was quick to laugh, with an easy smile that triggered a large happy dimple—the movies of Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and W. C. Fields regularly brought him to tears of laughter. Quietly introspective, a superbly gifted linguist, understated in all things, he cherished being American but always carried with him a modesty and politeness that grew from his formal upbringing and French roots.
I slowly emptied a small container of his ashes into the breeze. The light gray cloud blew perhaps twenty feet across the hillside and fell onto a patch of purple wildflowers. The flowers will be there every summer.
Carol and I held each other and wept. Dad was home. It was July 14, 2013—Bastille Day.