Dear Vivianne,
I hope my message finds you well. You have crossed into the light three weeks now. It was on Friday morning of March 20, 2020. Your family is coping beautifully. Your husband has taken your materfamilias place and has become the paterfamilias. On the seder night, Paul, led your daughters and their families into an organized, happy and spiritual celebration, donning his talit and kippah, and becoming more Jewish than Jewish to fit in your shoes. Yes, we all knew that your Judaism mattered to you and it was important to you to pass your family tradition on to your daughters, Melanie, Celine and Lizzy. Stay assured dear Vivianne, Paul is following up on your path keeping alive the flame of Judaism in your family.
Your girls are an example of sisterhood and solidarity. They stand by each other and by Paul supporting each other to cope with your absence. Your daughters made plans as to how to support Paul in this difficult time and Lizzy volunteered to stay with Paul on and off to brighten up his days and be with him at this time. To be honest with you I was a bit concerned with this choice and I was happy to see her on the second seder night through zoom accompanied by her partner, who seems very loving and supporting of her.
You have made a great job with your girls Viviannne! When I speak to them I hear how mature, caring, and loving they are. How down to earth, and yet so connected to their spirituality, in the way that you were.
On our last call, they mentioned you had created an altar in your home. A space for connecting to your inner self, a space to meditate, quiet the mind from the busy-ness of life and replenish the inner light. It seems to me that you set an example for them, and they are now looking to find their own ways to connect to theirs.
Celine towards her return to her medical duties at the hospital was consulting with me as to starting a morning practice of meditation. I sent her links to mindful movement guided meditations and suggested she start off with a gratitude meditation of 10 minutes a day to kick start her practice.
We have created a messenger group called Our Sisterhood which aims to keep the females of the family connected despite the physical distance among us. We have these calls from time to time connecting your daughters in London, with your sister Elda in Athens, your niece Annie in Paris and myself in Jerusalem in celebration and continuation of your sisterhood attitude.
Your granddaughters Talia, Elianna and Laila are all missing the special grandmotherly attention you gave them through gardening, storytelling and your unique theatrical presence, and I sense that they are sipping all drops of stories and words they hear expressed on you in each other’s homes and at zoom family gatherings.
Viviannou, you are greatly missed by all of us, yet your legacy lives within each and every one of us. I loved to hear at the zoom shiva your daughters say how they always felt you supported them and built their confidence by saying things that boosted their belief in themselves and their abilities. They also mentioned that you knew how to listen to them and ended your consultations with the punchline “what do you want?” guiding them gently back to their selves and their truths.
What I will always cherish, is the family joy experienced when you visited Greece from London when granny Yvette was still alive. I remember we would get together in her small garden apartment in Vouliagmeni, granny would have one of us kids bring the meal of roasted chicken, chips and salad over from Zachos grill, take out a few beers from her fridge and the party would begin. You and Haim, your older brother would start with the digging of our family’s past. Stories would come up from your childhood, and later life, and we would all laugh to the point of crying. Your giggling laughter was exhilarating, rousing laughter in all of us, carrying us all to a lightness we only experienced with you. At the end of each session of intense and prolonged laughter, so very therapeutic to our bone, we felt as if a few kilos of toxins were released thanks to you. We adored that quality of yours!
To me you were the Goddess of laughter. An inborn yoga laughter master of sorts.
Your homecoming meant to me a family gathering of storytelling, wound opening, and wound healing through shared laughter.
We would laugh about it all. The good times and the hard times. And that was what was so special about you: That you could laugh at all of it and take us all along with you in the ride.
Στο καλό Viviannou,
So long Vivianne,
We will meet again, to laugh and cry and laugh about it all again!
From Jerusalem with love,
Yvette Nahmia-Messinas