The mother of the 15-year-old boy who sank in the Ashuapmushuan River near Saint-Félicien on Thursday is in excruciating pain and is crying from the bottom of her heart.
“Be careful and don’t take any chances. An accident happened so quickly. Even the best swimmer in the world wouldn’t have gotten out of it,” says Isabelle Lamarche, shocked by the recent events.
When she returned from work on Thursday, the mother of the family had little idea that it would be the last time she saw her 15-year-old son, Meryl Gagnon, alive.
Credit: Isabelle Lamarche
It wasn’t until she received a visit from the police around 4pm that she found out her son’s simple outing with friends had finally taken a dramatic turn worthy of a horror film.
Then he was swept away by the river. Divers from Sûreté du Québec then found his body around 10:30 p.m.
“As a parent, that’s the last thing you want to hear. It was quite a shock and I felt like a ton of bricks,” she says, stifling a sob.
“Wear your heart on your sleeve”
Also through social networks, the young man received a wave of love. Many will remember him as a courageous, ambitious and selfless young man.
His relatives also emphasized that they will keep this picture of him forever.
“He was a little guy who was 100% alive. He had such a big heart, he would have done anything for those he loved,” says his big sister Mary-Soleil Gagnon with great admiration.
Credit: Mary Soleil Gagnon
The young man must have thought of the others until the end, heroically sacrificing himself when he pushed back his friend, who was also sinking in the water and wanted to help him.
“Meryl has always been like this. He always helped others first before helping himself. He always had his heart on his sleeve,” adds his mother, before she bursts into tears.
A close relationship
As his sister explains, the teenager had a very close relationship with his mother, which she even called inexplicable.
“It was more than a simple mother-son relationship, it was a merger. Meryl had great love and admiration for my mother,” she said.
The two had only recently started working together. The relationship, therefore, only grew when his mother was “so proud of him and what he became.”
“He was a boy with so much potential. We worked together every day and I trained him for his new job. We had just gotten home from work when the tragedy happened,” his mother says.
She also hopes that measures will be taken to restrict access to the event location so that nightmarish stories like this never happen again.
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