Tante Helene

This morning, while getting the sandwiches ready for L's party I got a text message. Thinking it was a reply to one I'd sent earlier I picked up the phone only to get a message from my sister that my aunt had passed away earlier this morning. The first wave of grief was intense, I hadn't expected this at all, not today. My aunt had Parkinson's disease and had slowly but surely been locked up in her own body. Her feet, legs or arms had long refused to obey her commands and for the last three years even her speech had become unintelligible. It's an awful, awful disease since her spirit and soul and active brain had become trapped in this body that wouldn't budge. So really it was good for her to go now but I am still really sad and miss her already.

I feel for my mum who will now no longer be able to speak French to her soeurette (as she called her) and I will have to make an effort to at least write to my mum in French from now on to keep this link active. For a little while when I was 2 and a half I lived with Tante Helene for over a month, some of my table manners were taught by her and later on she taught me a few receipes. Strangely enough only two days ago I cooked one of her receipes and thought about her a lot. Also with the funeral of my grandmother last Friday I was thinking about my eldest whose two names were "borrowed" from both the grandmother and the aunt. So now, even though both have gone, their names live on with her.

I still feel quite unsettled and tired and exhausted and am hoping to hear soon when the funeral will be so that I can make arrangements to fly over.