Originally published in the Toronto Star on January 21st, 2011. To go to the Toronto Star website please click here
A picture of Alzheimer’s victim Pauline Trudel Fisher, once a musician of renown, is proudly displayed at the Toronto home of her son Stuart, his wife, Laureen, and their daughter, Sarah.
A picture of Alzheimer’s victim Pauline Trudel Fisher, once a musician of renown, is proudly displayed at the Toronto home of her son Stuart, his wife, Laureen, and their daughter, Sarah.
She was so beautiful, ethereal, like a princess.
In a lost time, young Pauline Trudel sang opera for prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and governor general Vincent Massey. She sang on radio and with the Ottawa Operatic Society, floating through admiring throngs of music lovers and would-be suitors. Life blessed her with abundance.
A 1949 photograph taken at the Chateau Laurier when she was performing Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer shows a slim beauty, with delicate features, dark curls and gown drifting like a cloud.
Her passion for music and art flourished after marriage to Douglas Fisher and the birth of three children. She played piano and violin, composed music, painted and studied ballet. Her son Stuart Fisher, a financial comptroller in Toronto, remembers his mother singing or humming, her voice the soundtrack of their lives.
She was meticulous and dressed to perfection. When she sat, she always smoothed her skirt or dress, primly tucking pleats into place or pushing out wrinkles. She kept her knees together, hands placed lightly upon them.
That woman is gone.
Pauline Trudel Fisher, 83, lives in an Ottawa facility, placed in “lockdown” for her own safety. She has Alzheimer’s disease and has lost her precious mind.
Three weeks ago, son Stuart, his wife, Laureen, and daughter, Sarah, 18, visited her at the Ottawa nursing home. Sarah — the spitting image of Pauline — sang a Mozart aria for her, “Oiseaux, si tous les ans,” in the French of her grandmother’s youth.
Pauline didn’t know who was singing. She didn’t understand when Sarah knelt down and gently took her hand to thank her for the most wonderful gift of music. It is Sarah’s passion too, her beating heart, the language she always shared with her grandmother.
The photo from the Chateau Laurier hangs in the foyer of the Fisher home in Toronto. Pauline has written: “To dear Sarah, love your Nana,” and at the bottom, “Our future Coloratura.”
Pauline no longer remembers Sarah or Stuart or his three other children. She doesn’t remember their elegant home overlooking the Don River where, two weeks ago, he photographed a blue heron swooping down for a fish in icy water.
“If we could give it all away and give her mind back, we would do it in a second,” says Laureen during a recent evening in their home. “But we can’t. No one can.
“It is so sad she can’t enjoy music anymore. She can’t be here to see what she has given to her granddaughter.”
