An open letter to Monsieur Frau
Posted by Richard on | June 1, 2007
Monsieur Frau,
You don’t know me and I know you only by the noises you make as you sleep, but I think of you often. For five days we shared a room, ate, slept and bathed together. Language a secondary obstruction to us communicating. Your distant gaze and wailing cries in the night tell me that the fog of years had descended on you.
I sometimes ponder the irony. The vomit wiped from your chest by someone young enough to be your daughter as I wait for the elderly matron to remove my bedpan, clean me and replace my sanitary cloth. Dignity is a burden sometimes.
I wish I had known you, Monsieur Frau, when you wore a striped suit to work and drank coffee in pavement cafés. I wish I had seen you picking up your young children having fallen in the snow.
I hope you are sitting quietly in the shadow of the majestic peaks, your hair well groomed, your coloured shirt clean and crisp, and hands gently folded in your lap. I hope the sky is clear for you today Monsieur Frau.
Monsieur Frau, I hope you are well
Richard
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June 1st, 2007 @ 4:23 pm
Dignity is a burden but at least you came thru with yours intact.
If I was in your shoes I would not have dealt with it half as well as you did.
June 3rd, 2007 @ 8:21 pm
I am sure that somewhere M Frou still thinks fondly of his 5 days with “le grand cycliste australien.”