Same day I sat down with Frank, I sat down with Lise, and I want to tell you up front, this conversation is its own thing. She doesn’t tell stories the way Frank does. She’s quicker. She drops a line and moves. She walks me through Quebec City in the fifties, the grandmother who raised seven children alone after losing her husband to tuberculosis at thirty three, and the kind of kid she was, a talker and a gum chewer who the nuns couldn’t embarrass even when they tried. She’ll tell you why she stopped believing in God at seven, and in the same breath tell you why she still believes in spirit. She’s been a nurse most of her life, mostly on the night shift, and she has stories from those halls that stay with you.
Listen To Lise’s Legacy Call:
She tells the story of meeting Frank from her side. The night in St. Pete when the bouncer wouldn’t let her into the hotel bar because the book under her arm made him think she was a Jehovah’s Witness. The motorcycle wipeout on date three. The three and a half years of long-distance letters, in French one way and English the other, and the tape Frank once recorded of himself reading her a whole book aloud just so she could hear his voice. She talks about raising Emilie, and then she talks, honestly, about what it took to bring Nicole into the family after twelve foster homes. She doesn’t sugarcoat it. She tells you what that work actually looked like, and she tells you where they landed.
At the end, I ask her the same question I ask everybody. Her answer is two words long, and you’ll know it when you hear it. Sit with her for a while. She’s worth the time. Press play and meet her.
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