Lifestyle
SIMPLY LIVING FRANCE
EXPAT LIFE
S
hould I stay or should I go now?
You move lock, stock, and two smoking barrels to France. Maybe you are of retirement age or retiring early. You start to tick all the boxes in becoming ‘at one’ with France and living your best life as a married couple or committed partnership, it’s all good, but have you spoken about what would happen, if one of you became critically ill or suddenly died? For the purpose of this editorial, say your other half, love of your life suddenly passed away. Ask yourself, would you stay in France? Got you thinking hasn’t it? We never really want to think about it, do we? Death is horribly final, no coming back from that. However, discussing death and illness is a grown-up thing to do, we can only ignore it for so long. My husband and
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I have had many conversations about this recently. One, because I had a breast cancer scare last year and suddenly found myself thinking the worst and two, France hasn’t quite become my home and we are still very much a work-in-progress, France and I. Anyway, thinking I was staring death in the face, I immediately said that despite the health care in France being absolutely amazing, I wouldn’t want to die in France. I was very sure of that, but then we still haven’t found our forever home, nor are we of full-time, settled status in France.