My brother is 25 years older than me, and my sister's children are only a few years younger than I am. I never really knew my brother as he had left home before I was born. I was 17 when my mother died, two years after my father. My parents were wealthy, and my sister and brother inherited all of my parents' physical assets, which included a vineyard in France, that my brother managed, he graduated from university to become a vintner, and my sister inherited a rather substantial real estate portfolio in France and Germany, and I got a trust, locked up until I turned 30.
This afternoon, I got a call from my sister-in-law, to inform me that my brother had died. He came to the wedding at Christmas and seemed ok, he had lost a lot of weight, turns out he died of pancreatic cancer. I was not close to my brother, over the past two decades I may have seen him 4 or 5 times, but we did spend a long holiday weekend at his vineyard when the children were young. I knew my sister much better as I spent almost three years living in her house. Both moved to the continent 30 years ago my sister to Strasbourg and my brother near Macon, running his vineyard. My brother converted to Judaism on his marriage, his wife is french jew and it's something they felt was important to them and their children.
My sister-in-law said that we were not expected to join the private Jewish burial that is taking place Sunday after the Shabat, but we are more than welcome to join during the mourning. They had 7 children the eldest is older than me at 55.
I've been spending the last four hours trying to figure out how to get there, and it's a pain unless we are ready to travel for a day, and would involve two nights at the hotel. In the end, on Monday at 7 am, we are boarding a small private aircraft from Norwich airport that will take us to Lyon, which is less than an hour from my brother's vineyard near Macon. We will spend the day, with his family and return in the afternoon. It's only twice the cost of doing the trip commercial (food lodging transport etc) and we will be back home by 10 pm.
I've had to check the internet on what is appropriate for Jewish funerals, it involved a pine box, no flowers and a simple ceremony. I assume there is an important Jewish community in Lyon. Still, we are only expected to come to the house and spend a few hours.
Rest in peace brother
Note: Jeeze, it didn't take long. Ok, renting the plane for 3 hour's flight and 6 hours of wait is £ 4,600 including VAT. We take off at 7:30 am and land at almost 10 am (90 minutes). If we had flown commercial, tickets were £ 800 each, although there is a KLM connecting flight it's solidly booked, so the journey available was almost 10 hours. We would arrive at 11 pm, the return flight is at 8 am, so we have to spend two nights, that's £ 500 and 3 meals, which would be a minimum of £ 500. So 18 hours flying, two nights three days, total cost almost £ 3,500 for the two of us. The difference is substantial, but not outrageous, we are not talking 5:1 but not even 50% more. If we lived in London it would not even be a question, but out here in Norfolk, it's different.
Note2: people get upset when I refer to my sister-in-law as a "french jew", The problem is that's exactly how she describes herself. Maybe in French, it has less of a connotation...I don't know. My brother met his future wife in Lyon, all these years ago. He married very young, I think he was 21 or 22. Again he married before I was born. My sister is 17 years older than me. I have no memory of my sister living with my parents, I remember going to see her at the hospital at the birth of her first child I must have been 6 or 7 years old.
Comments