Mamie had changed her first name, changed her country, changed her life. She liked big restaurants, going out at night, working at night. She was the first in the family to wear pants, to get a license. Christiane said she was her role model. When she asked him if her loneliness was weighing on her, she said that it was the price of her freedom. She loved her nieces and nephews, our aunts Michelle, Brigitte, Sandrine, and our aunts Michelle, Brigitte and Sandrine, who she loved like her daughters, but also friends we barely knew. How many times were we surprised to learn that so-and-so had come for lunch, that another had lived in her house, or when we discovered photos of children framed in her living room and asked ourselves who it was. The explanation was simple. Grandma had her life. Before she was our grandmother, she was an independent woman, with character and who decided everything in her life, until she chose when she left.