“
You cannot lose a child.
It is forbidden, against nature.
We die before our children: it is this direction that the course of events must follow.
Otherwise, we go crazy.
»Jean-Paul Belmondo will have waited more than twenty years before agreeing to mention in his memoirs, A
thousand lives are better than one
, his daughter Patricia, who tragically disappeared on October 31, 1993 at the age of 31 in the fire in her apartment from rue de Rennes in Paris.
To read also Bebel the patriarch, filled by his family
When he hears the terrible news the huge actor, now in his sixties, understands that all of this is fragile, almost ridiculous.
In his biography, he who makes it a point of honor to preserve his intimate life, forgets his modesty to describe his father's pain: “
My little darling, my daughter Patricia, did not have time to be forty years old. .. My little girl is dead.
She who was my joy, working like me in the cinema, but behind the camera, my child, I will no longer take her in my arms.
"
Read also The theater, Godard, the death of his eldest daughter ... The milestones in the life of Jean-Paul Belmondo
Go back on stage to try to forget
Jean-Paul the flamboyant, the actor who knows so well how to make his audience dream by playing the roles of cop or thug, wonders how to appease his suffering.
Should we stop everything, shut ourselves away or continue for Patricia who also had decided to become a mountebank by working alongside her lifelong friend, Jean-Pierre Marielle, on the set of the film
Les galettes de Pont-Aven
.
His doctor comes to his aid by urging him to go back on stage immediately.
His words are convincing because they are final, without appeal: "
If you don't play now, you will never play again."
"
Read the fileDeath of Jean-Paul Belmondo, sacred monster of French cinema
Belmondo will return to the scene. Life will go on without Patricia. But he confessed at the end of his life that "
this pain cannot be worn, it carries you." It is irremediable, absolute. This sorrow cannot be surpassed, it remains. Fortunately I am not alone.
And it's true, his friends, Charles Gérard in the lead, and his other children, Florence, Paul and Stella will always be at his side to try to make him forget his suffering.