A Very Easy Death

Content Warning: This section of the guide and the source material refer to terminal illness and death, bereavement, addiction, and suicide.

Beauvoir writes that Françoise had feared cancer her whole life, but at the nursing home she never suspected she had it instead of peritonitis. Even on her worst day she doesn’t ask for a priest and dismisses her friends’ suggestion to summon one. Her friends blame Simone and Hélène for Françoise’s apparent rejection of her faith at the end of her life, but they have nothing to do with it. In the clinic Françoise wants to be surrounded by young, carefree people, not to discuss death with her old, devout friends. Nevertheless, Beauvoir regrets not telling her mother that she was dying in case that would’ve changed whether she wanted to see a priest.

Beauvoir interprets Françoise’s putting aside of religion as true devotion, not impiety. In Françoise’s personal papers Beauvoir sees that her mother had a deep, lifelong faith; some papers show that Françoise viewed prayer as something requiring concentration and energy, not a rote exercise that could be performed at any time. To Beauvoir this explains her mother’s apparent rejection of the rites of faith in her final weeks.