PARIS – For her first authorized visit in more than six weeks with her 80-year-old mother, Sabrina Deliry prepared a selection of their favorite tunes, among them Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose.” Later, at the Paris nursing home where the mother has been agonizing in the solitude of her room, feeling imprisoned and miserable without the sun on her cheeks, the breeze in her hair or her daughter's tender hugs, they listened to the French songbird together. “When he takes me in his arms,” Piaf wailed.
With mother and daughter forced to sit 1 meter (3 feet) apart, unable to hug or hold each other during their half-hour visit in the home's fenced-off small garden, the words rang like a cruel joke.