Fran & Jean Pelletier

I AM TOO YOUNG TO BE ALIVE AND DEAD AT THE SAME TIME.

Fran and Jean Pelletier

Credit: The Brunswick Beacon (N.C.) Report written by Rachel Johnson, Interviewer

The title is a quote from an interview of Fran Salone-Pelletier and her husband Jean by a staff reporter of the Brunswick, North Carolina Beacon in late December 2011. Jean and Fran are well known professionals in this area of North Carolina. Fran writes a weekly religion column in the Beacon. Jean is an accomplished artist and a member of the Waterway Art Association.

However, there is much more to say about them. Jean was a Roman Catholic priest ordained in the Notre Dame cathedral. He left the ministry after 29 years to marry his dear Fran. “It was the toughest decision of my life to leave the clerical ministry,” Jean said. “He is a priest through and through,” Fran added.

The couple met on a cursillo, a spiritual experience, they recall. It was 1970. She went on a spiritual retreat to enjoy a break from everyday life and to recommit her life to Christ. Most of the participants in the four-day retreat were women. “We were at lunch and this gentleman stood up and said he was visiting Bishop from Maine. Everyone was laughing and clapping,” Fran said.

Fran was the secretary of a parish council that was in turmoil at the time. She needed to write a letter to a bishop and wanted advice on how to do it. “So I stopped the ‘Bishop from Maine’ for advice to help write the letter. I asked him how I should address the bishop. He started giggling and said, ‘People just call me Bishop.’ I explained to him that wasn’t going to work because our bishop was much more serious.”

The ‘Bishop of Maine’ gave Fran advice and then they parted ways. During the last service of the retreat, people from the community came to greet the candidates. As Fran walked into the room, she commented to a friend, “The Bishop from Maine is here again?” “She looked at me and said, ‘that is Jean Pelletier. He teaches at Saint Thomas Seminary.”

Fran couldn’t believe she fell for Jean’s jest. Not to be outdone, she returned home and typed a formal letter to “The Bishop of Maine” identifying herself as local representative for a company that dealt with symbols of the Bishop’s office. “I wrote that it had come to her attention that he was going about as a renegade bishop without the proper symbols and if he needed help getting the proper items to call,” Fran said.

A couple of days later, the Bishop from Maine (Jean) called Fran’s home. The two became instant friends. A bond formed during the next 12 years.

Fran was alone, parenting four children. Her husband was in a convalescent home with MS (multiple sclerosis). Fran lost her husband to his illness. She raised her children and then moved to Florida to start a new job in religious education.

“When she was in Florida, I decided I would marry her,” Jean said. “You mean you decided you’d ask,” Fran laughed. “I didn’t want to move to Florida or stay in Connecticut and cause the Bishop problems. So we put a pin in the map midway.”

The couple moved to Raleigh and in 1988 relocated to Brunswick County, first living in Sunset Beach before building a home designed by Jean in Shallotte, N.C. “When we first moved to Brunswick County, we decided to take a few months off to enjoy the place.” Jean said. I went to Brunswick Community College one day to see about an art class. I met the secretary in the parking lot. She asked about my background and suggested I apply for a teaching position. I had a part-time job before I left that day.” But that wasn’t enough for Jean. “I told them I don’t want my wife’s brain to rot, so can she have a job too?” he laughed. “We both went to work because he went to check into an art class,” Fran smiled.

“On my way home from the college, I said I think I will become a hospice volunteer,” Jean said. “When I went in they said they had a job for me as a chaplain. I got two part-time jobs in one day.”

Both Fran and Jean are thankful to God for opening doors for them to continue with their ministries. Fran’s teaching background as a high school English and ESL teacher and her education with a master’s degree in theology have opened doors for many exciting adventures. Fran also serves as the lead chaplain at Brunswick Novant Medical Center where Jean also volunteers as a chaplain. Jean’s background as a Roman Catholic priest, French teacher, and spiritual director of a seminary, has opened many doors for him also.

Last year the Pelletier’s decided to move to a smaller home. They put up their house for sale and it sold in six months. But while the house was on the market, Fran became suddenly, violently ill. Two years before she had developed colitis. Before that, she says she had rarely been ill. But in February of this year, the colitis got worse. “I just kept getting increasingly sicker and sicker, she recalled. Fran saw several doctors and on March 1 she underwent emergency surgery on her colon. She was in five hospitals during the next four-and-a-half months – from March until July 7.

“She was dying at MUSC (Medical University of South Carolina). The doctor told me to go home and make funeral plans,” Jean said. Jean left Charleston, S.C. to make arrangements for Fran to come home. That was when their house finally sold. “She was in the hospital literally dying and I moved the entire house and decorated,” Jean said.

Fran’s condition was up and down during those months. “I didn’t think I’d ever see her walk again,” Jean said. “This week she’s walking two miles a day. Everyone calls her the walking miracle. We just did not think she would make it. She just kept saying, “I want to go home.”

As a hospital bereavement counselor and chaplain, Jean was familiar with those words. He understood Fran was saying she was ready to die. “My reaction when I hear this is to give permission. Her son and his wife kept saying she didn’t mean it,” Jean said. “One of her doctors told me she understood what Fran was saying but to consider where the words were coming from. Was it from the real Fran or the drugged mind? I had never heard anyone say it that way before.”

Despite doctors telling Jean to go home and prepare for the worst, the hospital continued to treat Fran like she was recovering. “I remember saying I wanted to go home. I want to die and go home to God.” Fran said, “The pain was incredible.”

Fran knew something continued to be wrong. “I kept testing negative for infection but I maintained that I had an undetected infection,” Fran said. Immediately after going to MUSC, Fran was given a colonoscopy. “They put in a nasal gastric tube and it never came out. Her colon burst and she went into immediate emergency surgery,” Jean said.

The path to recovery has been long- wounds that wouldn’t heal, transfusions, surgeries, hermatosis, bedsores, memory loss. Muscle atrophy and more, “There was a doctor in Charleston that told my family he was going to get me out of bed because if I didn’t get out of bed I’d die.” Fran said. “I recall hearing his voice. He’d say, ‘Good morning, it’s Luke’ and I knew agony was coming.”

Doctors said she wouldn’t be here to see a new year. But they were wrong. They said she wouldn’t walk again. They were wrong about that too. Fran Salone-Pelletier has defied the odds and as a new year approaches she and her family have found countless reasons to celebrate.

“Writing my column for the Beacon was part of my healing,” Fran said. “I knew that she’d go whacko without writing that column,” Jean said. Fran explained she typically writes her columns four weeks in advance. She has been writing the column for nearly nine years.

Jean contacted the paper and discussed some options for keeping the column alive while Fran was ill. After the four written columns ran, Jean wrote a column letting readers know what was happening. He also pulled several columns from Fran’s published writings.

“When she started feeling a little better, she wrote her columns from her hospital bed,” Jean said. “The first one was traumatic. She no longer knew how to use her computer. It scared the daylights out of her.” “I didn’t know to turn it on,” Fran said. “I was so panicked, I shook from head to toe.” A family friend re-taught Fran how to use the computer the next day. “Column writing was therapeutic on many levels. It showed me I can get back to where I was. I am too young to be alive and dead at the same time,” Fran said.

Creativity abounds in the Pelletier household. Fran writes and Jean paints. Fran has published three volumes of work that are meditations on Sunday readings from the common lectionary. The title of the book ties into the Pelletier’s life motto. ‘Awakening to God’ is the name and I think in some way that is our motto in life helping people awaken to the reality of God,” Jean said.

Fran’s column is written to help people take a second look and deepen their consciousness to the divine. Her inspirations have come from art magazines, daily happenings and more. Sometimes her columns are inspired by one of Jean’s paintings. She has written a poem to correspond with every painting he completes. “I sat in amazement at how she comes up with things to write about,” Jean said. “The columns are truly inspired. I begin and I end,” Fran said. “I have no control over it. I truly believe they come from God and that is it. After I have written a column I don’t remember what is there.”

“One of Fran’s talents is to see in people things people don’t know are there. She articulates interior intuitive feelings in a way they can relate too,” Jean said. “One of the reasons I was attracted to Fran is her mind. When we were just friends we’d have profound conversations on theological topics and spirituality.”

Jean began painting in 1974 and is a member of the Waterway Art Association. Hanging in the couple’s living room is a piece of their own history captured on canvas. One of the first times Jean was invited to Fran’s home for dinner, he commented on a painting in the living room. Fran’s children challenged Jean saying, “If you don’t like it do something about it.” Jean took the painting off the wall and returned it with a painting of his own over it. It now hangs in their living room.

“I am looking forward to whatever this year brings,” Fran said, as the new year approaches. “I am looking forward to a continuation of life at depth. That’s the greatest thing we have in life but if it is not lived in depth what is the point,” Jean said. “Last year was a really tough year. I have an incredible gratitude for life. We’ve had a rich life. We’ve been very blessed.” “We’ve been open to adventure,” Fran said. “This year I am going to be looking carefully at both roads taken and not taken. There is good in both. Be aware of the goodness.”

Reverend Jean Pelletier

Email: papajeano@gmail.com

Email: (wife Fran) grammistfran@gmail.com

Tel. 910-754-9126

North Carolina Coastline