Mon cher frere,

Je suis tres tres triste.

Ton frere,

Matthias

On December 27, 2024, at 7:33 AM, "Jérôme Bertrand - brjerome.osb at icloud.com (via csl_membership list)" <csl_membership@csl-membership.simplelists.com> wrote:

Dear Abbess, Sisters and Brothers,

Please, pray for the repose of my sister’s soul. Her name is Béatrice Bertrand. She passed away peacefully at 8:25 a.m. today, December 27, 2024. She was fifty-four and had been battling uterine cancer for almost four years, though recently, it had spread out to all her vital organs.

Béatrice asked me not to come to see her in November while she was having one of several brushes with death. Instead, she wanted me to wait until Christmas, her last, that she wanted to spend with her family. Despite medical assessments, that wish was granted to her and we had a lovely get-together at the hospital where the staff conspired to let us use the community room on her floor. Please pray also that all caregivers may be as loving and dedicated as the nursing staff at that hospital.

Béatrice is leaving her doting and steadfast husband, son, and two daughters behind, until such time the Lord deems it necessary to reunite them, and us.

Though not particularly Catholic, the denomination in which she was baptized, Béatrice was a good person, inside and out, as her many friends and family will attest. Not a devout Christian, but a person with many Christ-like qualities, she was relentlessly working for peace in her neck-of-the-woods, her family and large circle of friends. I would be hard-pressed to remember a time when she said anything remotely critical about anyone.

God rest her soul,
Br. Jérôme