M. Mischa Harmeijer’s journal
On the road north, this Monday.
I ended the week last Friday in Bettembourg. It is a place one loves to come back to. Since 2018, the people of Luxembourg have welcomed me with a warmth I find nowhere else, and Friday was no exception. The last time I was there, a member of my security team at the time absolutely wanted to come to Bettembourg, even though he was getting married the next day in Nîmes. That says what this hall does to people.
The evening was rich, fluid, deep. At one point, in the state of trance, a speech came out of me about the role of women in our society, and about the need for a woman to stay close to her children, in her role as a mother, for their upbringing. It was not planned. The audience understood it, and felt its importance. Everything was understood, that evening.
But the evening had begun differently. The first person I called, a lady I know, seemed blocked to me. Or rather, the situation was. I was picking up only one thing: a pain in the right arm, and the urgency of a blood test. She did not feel concerned. She thought of her loved ones; no one matched. So I moved on to someone else. It happens. I never force what does not come.
Today, in the car, on the road north, because tomorrow I am at the CGR in Saint-Quentin, I received this message. I share it without her name.
“I came to Bettembourg on Friday. I was the first person chosen. Mischa asked me whether someone in my household had a pain in the right arm, and if so, that this person should have a blood test very quickly. I thought of my mother, of my ex-husband, but they had just had one. This morning, I learned that my neighbour and friend, two hundred metres from my home, had a small heart attack. She left with the firefighters. And over lunch, the connection was made: she had an operation on her right shoulder a few weeks ago, and had an injection a few days ago. Thank you.”
I decide nothing. I pick up, and I say what comes, even when no one in the room yet knows to whom it is addressed. The information was right. It did not concern the lady in front of me, but someone two hundred metres from her door. What is there already exists, whether we see it or not.
If you were in Bettembourg on Friday and you have a testimony, leave it on my website, on the Testimonials page, choosing the right town. It is your words that count, not mine.
See you tomorrow, Saint-Quentin.
-Mischa Harmeijer
