Still, He Showed Up

Paris. May 19, 1885.

For four days, thousands of people are gathered outside a window on Avenue Victor Hugo — a street Paris had renamed after him, the man they loved.

Inside, the one who had written more words than most people read in a lifetime.

Victor Hugo is 83 years old. He is dying.

He picks up a pen. And writes four words.

Aimer, c'est agir.

His daughter Léopoldine drowned at nineteen. He found out by reading an obituary in a newspaper, over coffee, in a café.

His country exiled him for nineteen years. His sons died. His companion of fifty years, Juliette — who had given up everything to be beside him — died just two years before he did.

And still he showed up. For his grandchildren. For the poor. For the Republic. For the truth. Every single day.

To know what it is to love.

Not despite the losses. But because of them.

Love, left only in the feeling, becomes nostalgia.

What makes it real is what we do with it anyway.

He waits till she removes her makeup. Half asleep, exhausted — but waiting. Only to tuck her in and say: goodnight my love, may God bless us. The newspaper placed next to his tea before he wakes.

And then the harder ones — the drive to the airport in the middle of a fight. The listening — when you were the one who needed to be heard.

The ten thousand small moments that no one will ever write about or remember.

Not even the one you loved.

Aimer, c'est agir.

To love is to act.