Love and care between sisters
When Céline Labrie was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, her sister Anne Cameron became her caregiver
Their mother’s words generated great excitement: “Let’s go get dad at the store.”
It signalled a car ride to the heart of Welland’s French Town, where their father operated a grocery store at the corner of Crowland Avenue and Welland Street. Once inside Labrie’s Clover Farm, the girls — Anne and older sister, Céline — collaborated in the mischievous acquisition of sweet confections.
“He’d go to the back to turn off the lights,” says Anne Cameron, “And we’d steal candy.”
They went for the stick-to-yourteeth Mojos, filling their mouths and squirreling a few in all available pockets. Their mother, Lorraine Labrie, was their accomplice and hastened the stealthy operation with whispered warnings: “Hurry up before your dad sees you.”
Their dad, Herve, was also the store’s butcher and when money was tight, which it often was in a family of six children, the food on the shelves made its way to their dinner table.
Anne and her sister, Céline Labrie, were close. They were the babies with barely three years separating them. They played together. And together created wonderful memories, including the summer their father decided he wanted to “go for a drive” with the family and they ended up in Calgary.
One Halloween night in the late 1970s the grocery store burned down. Heartbroken, their father became ill and sold the property, which was later rebuilt and became Arcuri’s Cheese World. Their mother, equipped with no more than an elementary school education, found work as a welder at a local steel factory. She wore boots with steel toes and a welding helmet and torch-cut the ends off steel pipes. The guys called her the Silver Fox.
She taught the girls determination. Three years later, when Lorraine was laid off from the factory, she found night work as a custodian. The girls tagged along after school and helped empty garbage cans, scrub toilets and clean out ash trays.
“You do what you have to do to survive,” says Anne.
Then one day, very unexpectedly, the resiliency inherited from their mother and the strength of their sister-bond was needed more than ever. At 23, Céline was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an auto-immune disease of the central nervous system that has slowly, insidiously stole her independence.
At 54, Céline uses a motorized wheelchair and requires the daily care of personal support workers to get her dressed, fed and transferred from bed to chair and back. She lives with extreme fatigue and takes naps.
Years ago, she had worked as a dental hygienist but had to abandon her career when she lost the ability to move her fingers.
Through an immeasurable number of losses, Anne has been by her side. Dependable. A constant, unfailing friend.
“I named her a hero,” says Céline. Anne has been named a Hero in the Home, nominated by her sister. Every year, the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network celebrates the unpaid caregivers who support and care for loved ones at home and in the community. This year, 142 caregivers were honoured.
Anne, 51, is a registered nurse who works as a care co-ordinator for the HNHB LHIN, out of Welland hospital. She also volunteers as a Big Sister and serves warm meals to the marginalized community through the Out of the Cold program.
Their father died in 2002. And when Lorraine, 86, could no longer live on her own Anne took her in. She had just bought a house and gave her mother the master bedroom.
And then, a year later, Anne got married.
Lorraine had always told her daughter, “When you get married, I’m out of here.”
But she stayed (and she still has the master bedroom). Anne’s husband, Bill Cameron, said he’d do it for his mom, too.
Anne smiles. “It’s just easier to have her under my roof,” she says.
She also goes with Céline to doctor’s appointments and co-ordinates her complicated schedule of home care.
Her reason is simple.
She pauses; tears well in her eyes. “’Cause she’s my sister. I love her.
“And I wish I could bear the cross she’s got.
“She’d do it for me.”
‘‘“I wish I could bear the cross she’s got. She’d do it for me.” ANNE CAMERON