For me, singing is a way of escaping. It’s another world. I’m no longer on earth. – Edith Piaf

The wilted white rose lay on the stone slab of the grave of Edith Piaf. It was a gray day as I walked through Pere Lachaise cemetery, visiting the graves of the famous artists who are buried here. I just spent a few moments with Oscar Wilde and would have walked right past Gertrude Stein had her name on the plain granite stone not caught the glint of what light there was in the sky.

It did not surprise me to find a rose or two on Edith’s grave. La Vie en Rose was one of her signature songs.

Edith Piaf was born as Édith Giovanna Gassion in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris, which lies not too far from her current resting place. In Belleville there is a plaque commemorating her birthplace at 72, Rue de Belleville, although, as the story goes, she was born outside the building underneath the street lamp. From those humble beginnings she grew into the most loved chanteuse in all of France.

From her birth until her death, Edith’s life was embedded in tragedy, or so it seemed. Starting out her life abandoned by her mother, then sick and lonely with her alcoholic maternal grandmother, she was then rescued by her father after the war to be placed by him into his mother’s care, at a brothel where she worked as a cook. And that was just her first four years.

While at the brothel she suffered from blindness brought on by meningitis and was thought to be cured by the intervention of Saint-Therese after the prostitutes pooled their money to send her to the saint’s shrine for prayer at the age of seven. Because of this holy intervention, Edith prayed to the saint for the rest of her life.

After awhile, Edith traveled with her acrobat father around the country of France, creating street performances and passing around the hat for their daily keep. Edith sang her first song in public while touring with her father, and the rest is history.

Her life and her tragedy are reflected in her songs and in the strength and passion of her voice, which made her wildly popular in Paris and all over France. In an ironic twist, it was singing and putting her tragic life into voice that made her happy.

She died of liver cancer at the young age of 47.

I want to make people cry even when they don’t understand my words. – Edith Piaf

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