Our Mémé and our maternal grandmother
This post is dedicated to the sacredness of sisterhood, which unites me, Sarah, and Camille and links us with the generations of sisters who have come before us, the generations of sisters to come.
We three girls grew up under the loving and watchful eye of our Mémé, the Orthodox Jewish Tunisian nanny who was waiting for us nearly every day when we got home from school, the woman who cooked us tagine and couscous several nights a week, the woman who cried “s’millah binchi“* when we fell down, the woman who drew us baths when our parents had to work late. The woman who prayed for our health and safety, aloud, daily. A woman who only stopped working for us when her husband passed away and she left Boston to live in a retirement home outside of D.C. — when Camille was in high school and well after we “needed” a nanny.
That’s Mémé, on the left, pictured next to our maternal grandmother, Charlotte, a few years ago.
Mémé’s 80-something birthday was yesterday, and her younger sister died. I called her today to talk to her about it, and to wish her a belated happy birthday.
“Elle était si doux, elle aimait tout le monde,” she said of her sister (we speak mostly in French). ”C’est une maladie terrible,” she said of cancer.
“Je peux même pas imaginer,” I said. I couldn’t. I can’t imagine what it is like to lose a little sister, even at the end of life, to a ten-year battle with cancer. To lose a younger sister on your birthday. To lose a younger sister who is thousands of miles and a difficult plane ride away. Yesterday, on her birthday, Mémé sat in her one-bedroom apartment at the Jewish retirement home outside of Washington D.C., hoping for a phone call from her little sister. Her sister, in Israel, on the other side of the world, would pass away before making that phone call. The grief in Mémé’s voice when we spoke today brought her pitch from it’s normal chipper range down to a gravelly quiet.
“Oh, Mémé, I’m so sorry,” I said, still speaking in French.
It did make me realize how much I adore my sisters, how lucky I am to have them with me, far away as they each are. It was Cammy last night who texted me, telling me what happened, saying I should give Mémé a call.
And so, in life as in death, we sisters are there for each other.
*I have no idea how to transliterate that. I’ll have to ask someone.
