When I started my studies three years ago, I couldn’t predict all the things that would happen during those years, but losing someone was the most unpredictable. 

One week before starting my studies in Bordeaux, I enjoyed my time in my new flat with my best friends. We were here for a few days. I was the only one with a flat at this time because I was the only one who was starting to study. We were here, in a big city, alone, probably for the first time in our lives. We enjoyed all the moments we spent together drinking and dancing all night and visiting the city all day. All this with this strong feeling of freedom that you have when you start to live alone. We were indestructible during this week, nothing could touch us, we were young and innocent, but, apparently, life decided that at this moment, I was going to say goodbye to this.

My brother was working in Bordeaux at this time, and my dad was passing by to get home, so he picked my brother, my friends, and me in his car. So here we are, the five of us together in the car, happy because it’s summer, it’s warm, it’s sunny, and we are laughing and joking. But every good moment has an end, as does life. 

One call. My mom. Three words: “Baptiste is dead”. 

Three words and your entire world just falls apart. Three words and everything stops around you. Three words and you stop to breathe. 

My cousin just died.

He had just been in a car accident on the way back from Amsterdam with his best friend. He would have died instantly but nothing was certain yet, my mother didn’t know everything. The news was blasting through the car’s speakers, but I couldn’t hear anything apart from these three words:

“Baptiste is dead”. 

The funeral was one week later as well as my first day at the university. So yes, I can say I had an unusual first day at university. 

When I went to the auditorium on the first day, I didn’t know anyone and everything seemed so unreal. For me, everyone was living the same thing as me and was feeling the same pain as me. I didn’t understand why they were looking so good, so happy, why they weren’t crying, and shouting that death had taken someone they loved. During the first three months, I went back to my parent’s house every weekend. I don’t know why but I was feeling like I needed to be with my family all the time. It may be hard to say, but my cousin’s death made me realize that I love my family. Hard to understand that because you lost one of them. 

I studied social and socio-cultural activities, and it may be a stereotype but I think I couldn’t have found comfort in other studies. Every person I met and everything I’ve done there, helped me to feel better. We were learning how to work with different people, how to be there for them, how to understand the difficulties they have been through, so if you’re not able to first do it with your surroundings, you can’t do it with people you don’t know (even if it’s just for work). 

I met people who are my best friends now, I learned things that will stay with me for the rest of my life, I have indelible memories. 

University ended up becoming my safe place. I didn’t expect to say that one day to be honest but it’s true. It was that for me, a place where I can feel supported, listened to and appreciated, where I can learn stuff in a professional and personal way at the same time. 

It’s been 3 years now since my cousin passed away, and of course, the pain is still there, but not as much as the beginning. I found people, studies, and places that made me feel safe during those years. In those places, day after day, he was starting to be there with me, not just in my memories, but also in everything I was living. He was in every moment I was sharing with people, in every Christmas and birthday which he should have attended. 

You always get the impression that life will never have the same flavor again, and, indeed, it won’t, but it will just have a different taste now. Sometimes life will be black and sometimes it will be pink, but it will keep moving forward. Life is full of colors, so don’t let the darkness invade us from inside.

I don’t think I can “mourn”, because I don’t like the expression “mourn”. You don’t go through it, you endure it and try to overcome it. So we could say “dealing with it”. But how do you deal with it when it’s something or someone you no longer have? So that would be: “Try to deal with it, but without you around to tell us that everything’s fine”. Even if he can’t do that, I know he’s here with me, looking at me and taking care of me. I’m still living my life because I know he doesn’t want us to stop living. 

After those years, I think I realized that, for me, people move in and out of our lives like on a train. Some people get on at certain stations, others get off, and then you have those who stay until the end. There aren’t necessarily many of them each time, and those who get off we’d have liked them to stay longer, but never mind, because the train of life goes on, because those people want us to continue this travel, because at least we’ll have gone all the way to the end, to the end of the line. We won’t have got off before then, we’ll have gone for them, with them in our hearts.

Life is beautiful, despite all that, it is. Mine has had a different taste for 3 years now, but it’s still just as delicious. So now I’m continuing to love and share every moment of my life because I know that I’m no longer living just for myself, but also for him. 

Lilou Baudin