After a life in the service of France, and in the spotlight, Bernadette Chirac now lives as a recluse in her Parisian apartment. But before retiring from public life, she opened up about her relationship with death and illness.
Bernadette Chirac is, still today, the first lady most appreciated by the French. A special status which has always given him a certain taste for the media. But, now aged 92, the widow of Jacques Chirac – who died in 2019 – has deserted the cameras…
Bernadette Chirac: “We’re not sick, we’re holding on”
The one who has always served France now lives as a recluse in her Parisian mansion where she is supported on a daily basis by a team of caregivers and by her daughter Claude Chirac. A life that she always feared, and about which she agreed to talk about ten years ago on Swiss television.
Asked about the state of health of her husband, who had not yet died, Bernadette Chirac detailed their daily life. “‘I’m not sick, I can take the stairs’, he often tells me (…) Or he doesn’t realize – and that’s good – how much his life has changed due to the stroke he had before his retirement, or – what I also believe -, ‘we’re not sick, we’re holding on'”she confided to RTS.
Is Bernadette Chirac afraid of death? “I think about it often…”
In the process, the historical godmother of the Yellow Pieces returned in detail to her own vision of death. “I’m reaching an age where I go to funerals a lot”she had first blurted out. A fervent and practicing Catholic, Bernadette Chirac admitted to being afraid of falling ill: “Illness is scary. Who is the individual, whether they are a believer or not, who will tell you that they are not afraid of illness? That is a fear which is completely understandable and which I believe haunts every individual. Even when they say they are not afraid of anything, it is an infantile fear”.
However, she was much more peaceful about death, which has already taken her daughter Laurence, who died in 2016 of a heart attack. “Death I think about it often, when you reach my age, it’s been thirty years since I was elected. And it’s true that it also helps a lot to be a believer and to be a practitioner. But we say to ourselves, ‘then what will happen?'”she concluded with Olympian calm.
