After observing the life of Brother Trudon for the last 15 years, I called this meditation: The Force to Believe or the Will to Live. Brother Trudon believed in life. And he believed to the end. Driven by a strong and crazy will to live, he fought the right fight. For more than 10 years, doctors had pronounced his death in three months, he survived more than a decade. Trudon had the will and strength to live, the strength of faith. Beyond everything, man's life is in the hands of God.
Today, the Brother left us. It is true that we expected it. He too, but we didn't know exactly the time. We may expect it, but death always surprises. This is proof of our limit, our fragility and our humanity. God alone remains sovereign before death.
When death visits us, when one loses a relative, a family member, this one is right to be frightened, at first. First, because death is cruel. No matter why you die. We're crying about her death. When you lose a loved one, you have the clear impression that the sky falls on you and above all that the ground is stolen under your feet. You feel like everything is lost. And your hopes fly away, faint. « The importance of a presence is measured by the silence of an absence. ». Evanescence is a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of lack that cannot be properly named or expressed.
The family is then right to cry, because the brother's seat and chair remain empty. At every event, we'll realize the void. No one can take his place. He's been torn from his affection, as they say. Death is worth crying. Since he loved us and we also loved him. What a noble feeling that love! We join Gilbert Cesbron in praying: «Lord, teach me to love them alive, to love them in time». Let us not wait for the last moments for a posthumous tribute. It's too late.
Finally, when you lose a family member, you see things differently, because the experience of death will have taught you. The eyes of others on you and your eyes on the person also change.
In the face of the suffering caused by the death of one of his own,
Or we plunge into despair, and we complain
Or a fire of hope and care lights up
And it's time for responsibility
Since what he was doing now becomes your charge
The moment of suffering is a moment of vulnerability, and man needs a word of friend, a word that reassures, a word that goes back, for life continues. She must continue.
Brother Trudon who has just left us is a baobab who has just fallen; But today, I would like to see him not as a baobab but rather as a banana tree. A baobab is large and large, historical and secular, but it is simply imposing and static. Baobab is sometimes invasive and also has every chance of not developing younger under it. A banana tree, however, apparently frail and weak, is fertile. A great trainer of young people at Koshibanda and Mwembe carpentry school, Brother Trudon has been able to use his talent for the emergence of a young person in search of his future. He was a good man who looks like a banana tree. Its foliage served shade and freshness to those who wanted to shelter there. The banana tree is not intended to be alone, it always produces, it always makes grow the youngest around it, proof of its fertility and its determination to ensure posterity. The banana tree, after producing, giving, dies, letting itself be slaughtered; He dies to give bananas to eat, he dies to give birth to the youngest, so that the youngest grow up and grow up where he had grown. Life comes from death. One must die for the other to arise. What a fair play!
Brother Trudon withdrew so that we could be born, grow and give in our turn. It's the call this death sends us. « I have to decrease to grow ». To produce, a palm must be pruned, cut. So is our life.
Brother Trudon's life was a long journey. He had the chance to walk with good companions, people able not only to accompany him but also accompanied him. How many crossed his path? Who among us didn't get his advice, his smile? For my part, I worked with him in our provincial administration as an advisor. A man convinced of the value of the other, gentle and wise. Today we have a duty of gratitude to this illustrious man. But the fate of great men is often strange. They end up dying in simplicity. This is precisely the meaning of their greatness.
Brother Trudon has left us an example of a simple and devoted, disciplined and given life. But above all a life of faith with firm Marian trust and spirituality. What can we do for this duty of remembrance and gratitude? I finish by making you a proposal: plant each, in their plot, a fruit tree in memory. Let us not forget too quickly those who marked our lives and our history. And Brother Trudon is one of those.
May he intercede for all of us.
Farewell Trudon Pebangu
Goodbye, Brother.
May the land where you will soon rest be gentle and light.
Baudouin Mubesala, omi
07 May 2024
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