A Very Easy Death

“I was not very much affected. In spite of her frailty my mother was tough. And after all, she was of an age to die.”

Simone’s initial attitude toward her mother’s death marks how much her attitude changes over the course of the following six weeks. Here Simone still holds the indifference to her mother that she’s held for most of her adult life. She has fixed who her mother is to her and refers to her death with the clichéd phrase “she was of an age to die.” When this sentiment reappears later, Simone recognizes the callousness behind this default response to the death of someone over a certain age.

“Death itself does not frighten me; it is the jump I am afraid of.” 

Despite her ignorance of her terminal diagnosis, Françoise mentions death frequently during the six weeks she spends in the geriatric clinic. This raises the question of whether she suspects that she’s dying or whether her age, injury, and sickness just conjure death to mind. And, as she states here, what she is truly afraid of is not the void or the afterlife, it’s relinquishing life—the transition between life and death. She fears this transition because she loves life but has spent most of it in misery.

“Her vitality filled me with wonder, and I respected her courage. Why, as soon as she could speak again, did she utter words that froze me?”

The transformation of Françoise in Simone’s eyes has begun, but she still retains a dual aspect: both a brave woman facing death and the detestable figure disparaging the working-class patients in the public hospital in which she endured a night.