It’s week 10 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. Because the topic this week is Worship and this month is Women’s History Month, one relative stood out as the obvious choice – my Nana Connie’s sister, Gaetane Meloche, who was a nun, and spent most of her life serving in Haiti. You can’t get more worshipful than a nun. Now if you grew up in the 50s and 60s and were forced to go to Catholic school like my mom and her siblings, you may not have the fondest view of those ruler-wielding penguins. My mom used to have nightmares about them. The Catholic school experience was so bad for her and her four siblings that none of them are practicing Catholics today, despite the fact that my grandparents were staunch Catholics, and my grandfather was one of the most devout and genuinely spiritual people I have ever known. Aunt Gaetane, or Sister Mary Laura as she was known in her order, was not nightmare-fuel for little Catholic schoolchildren. She was highly regarded and much loved by those who knew her. By the way, if “order” isn’t the correct word or if any of my other terminology is off, forgive me – I am a total potty-mouthed heathen who wasn’t raised up under any religion.
I’m lucky that I had a copy of the eulogy given at her funeral in Haiti (written in French, so thank you, Google Translate!), a newspaper article written about her from the 1970s, several letters to my grandmother from Gaetane (also in French) and a letter about Gaetane’s memorial service written to my grandmother from her eldest brother (in English – he always wrote to her in English). All of this helped me round out the facts and paint a clearer picture of Gaetane’s life. Any direct quotes from Gaetane were taken from either the eulogy or the newspaper article.
Gaetane was my grandmother’s eldest sister, born on February 22, 1922, in Montreal. While many French-Catholic families were pleased and honored to offer a son up to the priesthood or a daughter up to the convent, my great-grandmother, Laura, wasn’t happy about Gaetane’s calling. My grandmother never mentioned why her mother was so opposed to the idea, but maybe she didn’t want to lose the help her eldest daughter provided. With two older brothers and seven younger siblings, she was undoubtedly her mother’s right hand. She left a home that was poor financially, but rich in love. Gaetane wrote of her childhood, “My childhood was very happy…The reciprocal love that closely united dad and mom, their great devotion to us, softened the rigors of Lady Poverty. They both knew how to underline with tenderness our little family celebrations.” It must have been difficult on everyone when she left home.
She became a novitiate when she was twenty-one, and in 1945 took her vows. After three years of teaching in Catholic schools in Quebec, she left for Haiti for the first time in 1948. While there, she fell in love with the country and the people. Thirty-three of her nearly forty-nine years working as a nun were spent in her adopted country. She rose to the role of Reverend Mother. She was described by her Sisters as “a woman with a heart of gold, welcoming, jovial, humorous, resourceful, super-active. There is no one with a bigger heart than hers when it comes to the happiness of others.”
You might think that the life of a nun would be boring, but Gaetane lived a full, exciting life doing what she was born to do – helping and serving others. In addition to teaching, she was trained as a nurse, and excelled in both fields. Once when a tribal leader’s son was ill, she was kidnapped and told that she better make him well because if he died, she’d be joining him. She healed him and was able to walk away from that scary adventure!
Aunt Gaetane was never idle. In 1970, she visited a church in Springvale, Massachusetts that was collecting donations for her mission in Haiti. The nuns wanted to provide work for those in poverty and the church in Springvale gathered craft supplies so the nuns could teach the people how to sew, knit, and create things to sell. The nuns hoped to eventually provide the poor with enough skills and education to enable them to climb out of poverty and into the middle class. While visiting, she was interviewed by the local paper. Asked about the people she served, she said she worked “always with the poor ones.” According to the article, her order was St. Anne, which had seven missions in Haiti with thirty-eight sisters, seven of whom were Haitian. When visiting the missions, Gaetane aka Sister Laura, travelled only with Haitian men. “I am never afraid. ‘Our’ people are so kind, so gentle.” When asked about the children she served, she said, “They want to learn very much. The children love school. We have 300 pupils in the Port-au-Prince mission and our day clinics serve at least 100 people – men, women, and children at each session. We serve the children one meal a day. It is often their only meal. A big stew is served made with soup bones, bouillon, and fresh, native vegetables. At the end of the week there is a treat, pois and riz (beans and rice). There is no dessert and no fresh milk. Dry milk is reconstituted but in order to get the children to accept it, the milk is sweetened with sugar spiced with cinnamon. It is served hot along with a daily pill for calcium.” Life at the Haitian mission wasn’t easy, but Gaetane took it in stride. Water was piped to the mission but had to be boiled before it was used. Rainwater was gathered in barrels and treasured for its freshness. Pigs and goats were raised for meat.
Gaetane returned to Canada for a few years in the late 1980s/early 1990s. If I remember correctly, I believe there were concerns about her heart. Despite how wonderful it was for her to spend time with her family, she no longer considered Canada her home. She longed to return to Haiti and told anyone who would listen that it was her deepest desire to die and be buried there. Her doctors worried about her health. Her family worried about the civil unrest in her adopted land, yet when she was cleared to return, she didn’t hesitate. She wrote excitedly, “I am returning to my home, Port-a-Piment, next Wednesday, if the situation permits. I am in the hands of God. I feel safe." She died from a heart attack on October 1, 1994. She returned to Haiti during a coup, yet she was never afraid. Her Sisters spoke of her bravery, and said she was always the voice of calm and patience during any crisis. She got her wish. She died in Haiti and was buried at the Cemetery of the Sisters of Sainte-Anne in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on October 8, 1994.
The size of Gaetane’s memorial service in Canada was a testament to the genuine love and respect she earned within the Catholic church. My grandmother was unable to travel from Maine to Canada to attend the service, but her brother Leclerc (known to all of us as “Uncle Johnny” – I don’t know why) wrote her a letter describing it. I will close with Uncle Johnny’s words:
I did tell you that the funeral service for Gaetane was very, very nice. I just want to emphasize it. According to the nuns, it was the biggest ever for a similar event. Six priests, including two Haitians, officiated. The chants by the nuns choral were both in “creole” and in French. A framed photo of Gaetane was at the front in the “santuaire.” The church was filled by nuns. Evidently, only the bedridden didn’t show up, and even they could hear the whole ceremony as it was broadcasted throughout the convent. And we were quite surprised to see so many friends apart from immediate family that came to pay their respects. During the service, eulogies were given by Sister Antonio and a French-Canadian missionary who had known her in Haiti. You should remember “Soeur Antonio,” she was among her first pupils at “Les Chardonniere,” and through Gaetane’s spiritual guidance, joined the community. To her, our sister was like a spiritual mother, and no need to say that her eulogy of Gaetane was very emotional. There was also present a delegate of the Haitian embassy in Montreal. He personally insisted on meeting the immediate family and told each and every one of us that we would be quite surprised by the high esteem held for Mother Laura in Haiti. We were all convened to the large cafeteria for coffee, juices, and biscuits. For the nuns it was quite a drastic change from their daily routine, and they savored every minute of it. Your sister talked a lot about her brothers and sisters, now they had the real McCoys in front of them, no need to say that they were around us like flies. To resume it all, Gaetane would have been pleased with this kind of “send-off!”
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