For the past month, the municipality of Maraussan (Hérault) and the association Les Maraudes 34 have been mobilizing so that Georges, an 86-year-old former mason, does not spend another winter alone in his car. Retired and rejected by his son, Georges has only 900 euros a month to live on but refuses to be given help. A situation that worries the inhabitants.
There are those who want game consoles, jewelry for Christmas. Georges, former masonry company manager in Cazouls-Lès-Béziers, 86, does not ask for any of that. ” I do not want anything. I’m not asking for anything. I just want to end it. To die, ”he told Midi Libre with great emotion.
Georges has been living in his car for five years. A month ago, he landed, in the greatest discretion, in a parking lot in Maraussan. By chance, because there was the petrol station, the bakery, the restaurant… “When I stopped in this car park, I no longer had the strength to leave. I’m at the end… “
Interviewed by France Bleu Hérault, Georges explained that he was formerly the boss of a flourishing business in Cazouls-lès-Béziers, but that since the fall of 2016 he had been living on the street, with his 900 euros per month pension. The latter lost everything after his son, who took over the family business, and his ex-wife turned their backs on him. “My retirement does not allow me to live with dignity,” he explained.
“My car is my home”
“My car is my house,” he explains with great modesty. I don’t want to leave her because there I don’t bother. I run the engine to get warm. It has been cold for the past few days. I’m used to it, I was a mason, the cold doesn’t scare me. I am used to suffering. But there, anyway…”
Georges has difficulty moving around and walks around with a crutch. He does everything to camouflage his distress, but as he tells his story the armor cracks. With a strangled voice, tears in his eyes, he explains his life and even tries to pretend that he is happy in this car where he has spent the last five Christmases.
It begins, forty years with the same woman. A boy, “He can’t be mine. It is not possible that I engendered such a wicked being. Then another woman. Younger.
And five years ago, he lost everything and found himself on the street. The reason ; he was silent. “Some time ago, I went to see my son. He told me leave or I’ll kill you. This boy, he is worse than his mother. Georges shows no resentment. However, he blames the blow. Fatigue, moral exhaustion. Five years of loneliness, it leaves traces.
Accompanied
But there, for a few days, he finds himself accompanied. Pampered by Laurence and Sandra from whom he could not hide his distress for long. “We quickly understood that he had problems, confide the two managers of the restaurant Au Bonheur des papilles. We immediately called Maraudes34, and Soizic arrived very quickly. »
Since then, Georges is expected every noon for lunch. In the evening Laurence comes back to prepare him a hot meal before he leaves to spend the night in his car which he does not want to leave for anything in the world.
“This year, I’m invited for Christmas,” he says with an undisguised smile. Laurence and Sandra have decided not to leave him alone and on Friday he will be part of the family. He bursts into tears. And he adds: “You know, these ladies, they do a lot when it’s difficult.
I don’t want to hurt them, nor give them work. Georges has chosen to live on the street and he doesn’t want an apartment. “If I have an apartment I would have to stay there. With the car, I can still move. »
