Sisters of Saint Joseph of Annecy

Sr. Claire Françoise GURLIAT, who died in July 2021 at the Grand Chêne in Vieugy, had donated her body to medical research.

 

Here is the message that was sent to us from the Faculty of Medicine at Grenoble: 

"Your Sister will continue to live with the students of the Faculty of Medicine at Grenoble. When a person arrives, the students turn to her to thank her for donating her body for the advancement of medical research and assure her they will treat her with respect.”

 

Every year a ceremony of remembrance is organised for all the deceased on the premises of the crematorium because it is a place of separation but also a place of recollection and humanity. The purpose of this commemoration is to remember the generous donors with dignity.

 

On October 23, 2021, Sr. Raymonde Marie and I attended this ceremony to which the families were invited. 

 

The Professor, Director of the Laboratory, surrounded by staff members, addressing the assembly, thanked the families present, evoking with great delicacy the suffering experienced by some, in front of the choice of their loved one and its consequences:

• as soon as the death is established, the body is taken to the laboratory.

• after cremation, the ashes are not returned to the family.

 

He then insisted on the value of the gift of the body. Each year, the laboratory receives a hundred bodies.  Physician training and research cannot do without such generosity. All medical students in Grenoble are educated to have respect for such gifts.

 The ceremony continued with the laying of a wreath in the Garden of Remembrance and a minute of silence. 

Families who wished to do so were then able to meet the Professors for further explanations. 

Generosity, delicacy, respect, thanksgiving...  such are the words that inhabited us at the end of this ceremony. 

 

They donated their bodies to science. They thus bore witness to their faith in the progress of Medicine. Students, Doctors, Professors and Patients, we all honor their memory and say thank you.

« Even in Death, we serve Life. »

May all these generous donors rest in peace!

Sr Marie Louise Vulliez