Providence in Aix-en Provence

The journey from Toulon to Aix-en-Provence was immediately defined by an atmosphere of inescapable confinement and auditory discomfort, a stark contrast to the promised idyllic escape. On the crowded bus, the old man, a keen participant in the excursion, found himself a captive audience to a cacophony of bodily noises. It is not considered impolite in many social settings to excuse oneself from a room or a dinner table when plagued by proximity to aggressive sneezing or coughing. Yet, on this moving coach, escape was an impossibility.

The initial discomfort came from the back of the bus—the loud, rhythmic snoring of an old bloke that began almost as soon as the journey commenced. This noise was, perhaps, less surprising than the absence of the advertised scenery. The brochure had painted a compelling picture of a “verdant patchwork of meadows filled with countryside flowers and bucolic valleys of noble heritage.” From the perspective of a bus hurtling along a freeway, however, the landscape remained stubbornly mundane.

This general hum of annoyance was soon intensified by the sounds of illness and poor manners. Coughing, initially a distant, manageable sound from the front and rear, became acutely personal when a man in a dirty red jacket took a seat just two seats to the old man’s right and joined the chorus. As if this respiratory distress were not worrying enough, the lady directly in front of him began to emit startlingly loud burping noises. These were not discreet, sharp sounds, but “ginormous and long noises,” emanating from a woman who, with her elegant appearance, seemed beautiful and sophisticated. Her dignity, however, was rapidly eroded as her involuntary expulsions were exacerbated by the gentle sway and gyrations of the moving bus. She was prone to seasickness on the boat but this was such a gentle bus ride by comparison! The sounds were as uncouth and jarring as the “uncontrolled farts” that two elderly passengers had released earlier during the effort of heaving themselves up the steps to board the vehicle.

The general unpleasantness of the journey was, in a sense, a microcosm of the entire trip’s frustration. Such annoyances, the old man reasoned, were often to be expected when travelling with a large group of elderly folks on a Mediterranean cruise ship’s shore excursion. But the trip itself, advertised as a five-hour opportunity to explore Aix-en-Provence, felt like a calculated deception—a “real con.”

The old man’s participation was entirely an impulse decision, ignited by the practicality of economics. He had initially intended to hire a private taxi, but when his fellow travellers decided not to join him and only informed him of their decision during breakfast, the cost became prohibitive. The cruise excursion was his only alternative and he had only twenty minutes to find the booking office and pay for the ticket, if indeed there were any tickets left for sale. The leaflet that lured him focused heavily on one major attraction: the promise of ample personal time for tourists to “retrace the steps of Cezanne by visiting his studio, where he painted some of his largest and most ambitious works including The Woman with the Coffee Pot.” Feeling abandoned, the rest of his companions bar one followed suit, everyone of them cursing under their breath for the abrupt way he left their breakfast table without as much as an explanation or convincing them to join him on the excursion.

The five-hour excursion was, inexplicably, immediately cut by 30 minutes, likely under the pretense of ensuring all passengers returned in time for the boat’s evening departure. With 90 minutes dedicated to the outward journey to Aix-en-Provence and another 90 minutes for the return, this left the tourists with a meagre 90 minutes of free time to wander the historical town, founded by the Romans in 122 BC.

As the group was being guided through the “labyrinth, stone-paved streets” of Aix-en-Provence’s beguiling Old Quarter, the old man finally voiced his specific reason for being there, asking the guide where Cezanne’s studio was located.

“Ah, that’s easeely an howeur’s walk away, hoh!” she replied, her words heavy with a thick French accent, confirming his rising suspicion.

The old man silently swallowed his profound disappointment. There was no point in drawing attention to being swindled. It was better, he thought, not to let the world know he had been scammed.

In truth, his mind had already travelled far beyond the fraudulent Cezanne tour. Less than half an hour after leaving Toulon, he and his sister, who was travelling with him, had received an urgent text message from a sibling back home, informing them of a sudden and severe decline in their mother’s condition.

The news was a profound shock, knocking the breath from him and causing him to curse his decision not to cancel the entire cruise holiday a fortnight earlier. The trip up to this point had been almost preternaturally perfect. It was the final leg of their cruise holiday before their ultimate destination, Barcelona, and they had experienced the best of everything they could have hoped for: perfect weather, no squalls, no miserable fights among themselves, intense mahjong games, wonderful food, and genuine laughter. In fact, the old man had experienced an unusual level of attention, which now, in retrospect, seemed ominous. Strangers compared him to John Wick; a couple from Hong Kong, Bernard and Joanna called him “Yao Yeng Si”—a Cantonese term they translated for him as “cool dude.” Bernard later called him “Keanu,” a nickname he had heard before in Istanbul. An old lady admired his glasses, another loved his old tee shirt, and many complimented his jacket. Many smiled or waved to him as they passed him on the boat or on land. Some even acknowledged his presence with a nod. The perfection, he realized, had been “too good to be true.” He morbidly concluded that these seemingly random, positive interactions had been a kind of gentle preparation for the terrible news he was about to fully absorb in Aix-en-Provence.

The details of the message were agonisingly clinical and raw:

“Her breathing is very laboured and she’s heaving very hard during the few seconds that she’s conscious and when she’s unconscious she doesn’t appear to be breathing at all. When she’s awake, her face is very contorted, she’s digging her nails into my hand or she will pull at the bedcovers or she will scratch at her head. And then her face becomes relaxed again briefly before she loses consciousness again. It’s quite distressing to watch, so I won’t send you any videos. I think it’s time to give her the morphine. She really is not getting anything out of this existence, whether or not she’s in pain. I don’t want her to suffer anymore.”

The family had already made the heartbreaking, collective decision to consent to initiate her “end of life” pathway.

The old man wrote back, each word a physical burden on his mind: “Thank you for your observations. I agree with you. It’s now suffering without any hope. It may be just a matter of hours before she won’t regain consciousness. Play soothing music for her please. Barriere’s Adagio for two cellos, was what I played for Ahpa [our father].

Not long after, a nurse from the nursing home attempted to call him. Due to the bus’s poor internet connection, he missed the call, and in a state of growing panic, he frantically asked his older brother to ascertain if it was an emergency. All the while, the bus was passing the long, dramatic stretch of limestone hills in the distance. Cezanne was entirely forgotten; his mother’s comfort and well-being were the only matters occupying his mind.

He and his younger sister were still on the bus as it meandered toward the town centre when their phones rang simultaneously. His sister managed to ask their siblings to call back in a few minutes when they could step away from the other passengers and have a private conversation.

When he finally had a chance to speak to his mother, he found himself incapable of speech. She had briefly regained consciousness, but all he could manage to utter was his name and “Ahma, it’s me,” before the sudden, crushing weight of grief constricted his throat, reducing him to an emotional mess. He felt a big heavy stone in his throat.

He used the time his younger sister spent speaking to their mother to collect himself. He was now certain his mother could only hold on for a few hours more. He had to speak or risk the eternal regret of having been unable to find his voice to say his final goodbye.

“Ma, we are all ok and will look after ourselves well; It’s time to be calm and peaceful and know that Pa will be waiting for you. Go in peace, know that we all love you and that we are all safe and well,” he said, forcing the words out, gulping down his tears, and holding his voice steady and clear.

Immediately after, he walked quickly away, seeking solitude to allow the tears to fall. In Aix-en-Provence, the place of the artistic scam, he searched for a deeper providence for his mother, deeply certain she would not wait for them to return home to Adelaide. Later, on the bus ride back to Toulon, a realization settled over him: his mother had already found providence for a very long time. The loving and tender, benevolent care that he and his siblings had given her for most of her life had to be a profound gift from a great power.

Less than 24 hours later, the old man was wandering along the side streets off La Rambla in Barcelona. After a light lunch of tapas and Sangria, he paused, reading the words that appeared on his phone. A deep, raw shock came over him before he finally shouted, his voice cracking with finality, to his sister, who was some seven meters ahead with the rest of their companions, “Hey sis, Ahma just passed away!”

They had, just moments earlier during lunch, raised their glasses and made a toast to the grand old dame, entirely unaware that she had passed away approximately half an hour earlier.