Cimetière Saint Pierre - Mauritius

Cimetière de Saint Pierre - Mauritius.

Dear children, grand children & Descendants,

This is addressed to you wherever you may be presently and wherever you and your descendants may end up being in the future.

In the present, as I compare facts with the past, and prepare for the eternal future, please know that I am doing what my heart is most at peace doing in today’s world of transients.

If I were to live in the past I would be a ‘living dead’ person crying day and night. I would be mourning my losses, lives of dear ones and all else, deep through every evening of my daily deaths.

Instead, I thank God for giving me the strength to live in the present without being a present burden. I pray not be, in the future, a burden to ANYONE from the past

To help me be happy in the present, regardless, God surrounds my daily existence with lots of loving and most caring people who may be far, over the horizon that unites heaven and earth, but are yet so near!

God teaches me to be happy with all that He gives me as well as with all that He alone should deem best not to give me!

He teaches me and guides me how to share His peace and Love with open arms and hands, likewise, with close and distant  neighbors, wherever they are. God encourages me to do that through forgiveness, forgetfulness, compassion, action and example.

That is a newly found source of joy that should last me for eternity and hopefully help me squeeze my way through the final gates without an ounce of ‘hate’ towards anyone whomsoever in my heart.

In the meantime, I love to go and pray, over and over again over the tomb, of Francois Leclézio, who arrived in Mauritius over 200 years ago in 1792. I further pray that 200 years from now, at least one of my descendants, will remember me and will discover our tomb, with our name carved on marble, in our exclusive family village located in the St. Pierre Cemetery near Euréka, Moka.

That village in that cemetery is testimony that, at least in Mauritius, the Catholic faith traditions, that have inspired our family, have survived the test of the passing of time.

To increase the chance that, our long established family traditions further survive the passing of time, our descendants should consider themselves very lucky to have the opportunity to have one foot in America to stand in front of the memory of their maternal ancestor, lying under the plaque on the ground, at the Holyrood Cemetery, north of Seattle. May that plaque and that Cemetery endure the passing of time and enjoy the visits of family calling by often.

The family progeny will also have the dual opportunity to stand on the other foot in front of another one of our final home on earth, in Mauritius. That is in front of a rock solid basalt sepulcher that we have received from my father. The survival of those basalt sepulchers have been already tested for over 200 years.

Too bad that my father, Fernand, is now, by his choice, absent from the family village. He chose to have his lonesome ashes buried  somewhere in State College in the State of Pennsylvania where he never lived or laid in state. 

I could write a voluminous book on that subject.

Let it only be stated that my father, after having his sepulcher, « his last home on earth », as he called it, built, is now nowhere to be found lying around in that family tabernacle of the faith of our fore fathers, in the Saint Pierre Cemetery.

Yet, that tabernacle, is very heavily populated with the « final residences » of so many generations of Leclézio family members. That fact to this day has ensured the visit of local family members as well as family coming from all over the world.

While still on earth, I have deliberately chosen to play in the twin casinos of the life of both the living and the dead. One of the tables on which I place my bets is in the US and the other one is in Mauritius...

While playing at the game of life and death, while still alive, I have also realized the importance of «  Letting the dead take care of the dead. »in today’s transient world, years from now, the living may show up so seldom, if at all...

Therefore, the truly living should never be ‘living dead’ people. That way they will not be already, long dead while waiting for the day to die and and be whisked away from the gaming table.

Life, death, rebirth, eternal life is a gamble based on the choices we make. In His infinite Wisdom, God has created us free to CHOOSE...

Thus, anyone of you, children, grand children and descendants will have the opportunity to choose the tables at which they want to play the game of life under any form and designate their desired final resting place.

At 72, I have come to realize that, in the past, I have left my country for a long while. But the country where my umbilical chord was buried has never left me. Thus, I have always longed to return to live in the land which I was stupid to leave and to which I, thankfully, remained tied by my umbilical chord.

Upon my birth, to that land, my mother donated some of her warm blood while I watered it with my fresh first tears.

Upon my death, to that same land, I want to return that part of my mother’s blood that will have gone cold in me, plus my own. Let those present, if at any at all, at my funeral irrigate Mother Earth  with their warm tears of caring love or their cold casual and or careless tears.

My belief in our lasting ‘fathers faith’ and traditions is God’s guiding force that I faithfully cling to and enjoy now. 

May I prayerfully cherish the treasure of a lasting faith for eternity.

God bless u all. Love u all.