Can we laugh at everything? Maxette would have replied in a loud, resounding... YES!

Maxette and laughter, one did not go without the other and vice versa! What an ability to make fun of what she heard in order to reproduce it in spontaneous, sonorous, frank, massive, and meaningful laughter. What joie de vivre she deployed and conveyed in her moments of hilarious ecstasy; life became simple, all you had to do was jump on the train and let yourself embark on the wacky imagination of laughter... Maxette never laughed at...she liked to laugh and make people laugh for the sake of gaiety, for the good humor it engendered and sometimes in her exuberance it was a howl. Hilarity that literally exploded, leaving one more than just, stunned.

It was that communicative youthful good humor that we envied. For her, paradoxically, laughing was a serious act. Hilarity with purpose.

Maxette, your laughter echoes within us, nothing will extinguish it; only the sorrow of your loss turns our laughter into tears.

Jean-Paul Pouron
Stockholm 26 October 2020
Translation from french to english by Haide and Nozar Mossadeghi

Raphaël Confiant

Obituary

Tuesday 20 October 2020.

When you hear her laugh, it is as if you have opened a door to another universe. Although she has suffered a lot in her life, she is full of joy.

We met once, at the airport in Rézé, it's so many years ago so I can not say exactly when, but I can not forget that day. She was with her husband Malte, a Swede who did not speak much, and we started discussing creolity together. She said to me "I am not a learned person but I understand very well what work you do. I am a Creole myself and I tell about you, your culture, your books, in my husband's country Sweden."

I was amazed for a while that day.

You tied your hair with a mattress fabric and you had an old-fashioned blouse that made you more beautiful than a sugar cane of feathers in December. We talked, talked, talked so much that we fell into laughter but we had not gone crazy. You tell me that the divinity of the world, on the planet, is Creole. To get all the people of the world to look for a way to come to an agreement instead of fighting all the time. And you kept telling me in French:

"I am an ambassador for Creole in Sweden."

Language exists for a reason: with the Internet you can give a lecture anywhere, in any country, you can write articles about the Caribbean and our Creole culture. You have just made a TV appearance where you tell that Swedish has also become your language just like Creole and French. Almost every week you make a video on Facebook to give us your news. You sing, dance, give us strength and courage to cope with life's difficulties.

Today I am sad Maxette, so sad that I can not even look at the sky to see if your face shines brighter than the sun itself. It's like a part of my soul torn apart. But I know one thing: your other country, Sweden, should give you respect for what you are worth …

Free translation of the article "MAXETTE MONTÉ AN FILAO" by Raphaël Confiant.
http://www.montraykreyol.org/article/maxette-monte...
http://www.potomitan.info/maxette/maxette.php

/Malte Olsson