Invitation card

Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, May 2019.

The invitation card is framed in the kitchen. Witness of a past glory, it has pride of place on the wall above the stove. She had been pacing up and down for years, alone, the roads of Normandy. She has been collecting in the medical files of the hospitals and practitioners who opened her their archives, precious data to aggregate and dissect the causes, the incidences and the risk factors of cancer. She first thought it was a joke. A call was enough to confirm that the invitation was serious.
The government launched a national plan to fight against cancer, giving half a billion euros over five years to improve prevention and screening, the quality of care and support for patients and invest in research. And, as the French presidentialist dramaturgy requires, Jacques Chirac was to make an address to the concerned actors. Patient associations, ministers, researchers and practitioners whose title and name had been elegantly inscribed on the cardboard had to meet in the presence of the republican sovereign, embodying the policy that had been partly decided without them. “Required attire” was the only indication on the role that was expected of them.
Regardless of the “assessment” of the cancer plans, the invitation card framed in red recalled that she participated in an unusual Republican ritual and remind her at every glance a consideration and a momentum that has encouraged her, at least for some time.