Four months after Jean Lapointe’s death, his son Jean-Marie Lapointe is working on a very personal book: a diary detailing his relationship as a carer in the final months of his famous father’s life.
“I feel completely fine,” explains Jean-Marie Lapointe of his new life without his father, who died on November 18th. This writing project – a diary written in “I” – is driven precisely by this inner peace.
“At the end of his life, when I saw him, all that mattered was what I could do for him and Mercédès, his wife, to alleviate his situation and accompany him as appropriately as possible,” he says.
Luc Belisle / Le Journal de Montreal
Jean-Marie Lapointe and his father Jean in April 1998.
“I was 26 when my mother died of alcoholism, and there was a lot left unsaid when she left,” he says. I turned 57 with Dad, I’ve matured, and all the volunteer work I’ve done in palliative care has prepared me for this end of life. I want readers to benefit from this experience.”
• Also read: Jean-Marie Lapointe, son of alcoholic parents, confides in Maripier Morin: “I was afraid of growing old like my father and mother”
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He hopes his book, which will be published by Éditions Libre Expression next fall, will become a reference for people experiencing the end of a loved one.
Jean-Marie Lapointe himself was accompanied by the renowned psychologist, author and supervisor Johanne de Montigny to manage different phases of his father’s end of life.
It was therefore natural for him to ask the specialist to participate in his book.
“She acts as a companion to the companion that I am in the book,” he says. It is a reference: for me personally and in the book.
Johanne de Montigny is therefore Jean-Marie-Lapointe’s advisor and mentor.
“It was she who validated my questions and my feelings in my role as a companion when my father was alive,” he continues. She is a great specialist in terminal care and bereavement.”
Actor, comedian, Senator Jean Lapointe died in November 2022 at the age of 86.