Éliane in my life
I have often thought of Éliane since her death four years ago: when I try to build bridges between people and be faithful in friendship; or when I was sick.
After the heart attack which left me weakened for several months, I thought about her courage in the illness and I tried to do like her: not to close in on myself, to pray for others and to remain open to encounters. I always knew her to be ill, without ever hearing her complain. She had cortisone injections every day: on pilgrimage, when I gave her injections, she asked me about my children. She fought suffering by opening up to others.
I walked with Éliane for twenty-five years. We met in Chalon-sur-Saône, in Saône-et-Loire, thanks to the Saint-Laurent Network which brings together Christians living in situations of great poverty and social exclusion. Éliane knew how to bond with the people she met and maintained many of these bonds. During our travels together, I don’t think there was a place where she didn’t have someone to go see. In Chalon, she cultivated a very large network of friendships: her Muslim neighbors, residents of nursing homes, young people placed in foster care or sick children…
His faithfulness inspires me. For example, I told him one day that my husband and I had adopted a child. She asked me her birthday. And every year, she sent our daughter a Malabar and a pious word. Éliane wrote a lot, on small booklets of four to eight pages that she made from school notebooks and decorated with images cut out from magazines. There emerged an affectionate warmth that I have not forgotten.
I wonder what mark she left in my life. She showed me the way to relate to people who are different from me and each other, in a faithful friendship that means to me, in a way, that God is faithful. Her way of giving what little she had pushes me to always question myself: where am I in material detachment? His courage, his love for his family, his kindness towards everyone inspire me. In my memory and in my heart, Éliane has the face of a saint.
