Jeanette Sabto, popularly known as Gina, was born in Cairo on November 3, 1938 and apparently again on November 8. When she arrived in Australia in 1957, the immigration officials misread the 3 as an 8 and it was easier to have two birthdays than succeed in changing official federal records.
Gina grew up in Alexandria with her parents Isaac and Stella and siblings Aimee, Joe, Suzy and Jackie. There she developed her love of the beach and swimming. Gina wished that summer would never end, and now for her, it won't.
![Jeanette (Gina) Sabto, teacher and writer](/web/20170407221032im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/d/y/1/w/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gve6fc.png/1491366721854.jpg)
Realising that there was no future for Jews in Egypt following the 1956 Suez campaign, the Sabtos arrived in Australia in 1957 to join Aimee and John, and it was here that Gina pursued her tertiary education, achieving a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Education, a Master of Education and finally a Doctor of Philosophy (in Education) in 1986.
Gina went into teaching in various schools and universities, culminating at Mount Scopus College, where she taught English, English literature and French up to Year 12 and from which she retired in 1999, almost four years after her first cardiac bypass surgery.
Gina was asked to replace a teacher on maternity leave from the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School and remained there for another four years, before retiring after another cardiac event.
She was a well-travelled polyglot with French, English, Arabic, Italian, some Spanish and a smattering of Hebrew, but not too useful in Japan. Gina spent a few years in London and another year teaching in Israel, but was always drawn back to France. Her two trips back to Egypt were with a degree of trepidation but were both successful and filled with nostalgia, especially when the bus driver in Alexandria made an unscheduled trip down a very narrow road so that we could all see the apartment in which the Sabtos lived.
Gina was a loyal friend, described by a not inconsequential number of ladies as their best friend. Indeed, at our wedding and to the consternation of the rabbi, Gina was escorted by nine attendants. Although her increasing health issues meant that she spent less time with her friends, the quality of their friendships never diminished.
Gina had never been in a hospital except as a visitor until her first bypass surgery shortly after we were married, and as time passed she required more and more hospital treatment. Eventually she had two strokes in 2011 and 2012. The first left her aphasic and required her to relearn to speak over a period of about six months, and the second left her with cortical deafness – a condition in which she heard everything as noise but couldn't process into anything meaningful. Consider the awful irony of someone whose profession was language first being unable to speak then being unable to hear.
On the other hand, about six months ago we were at the ballet, which Gina was able to enjoy visually, and she turned to me during the mazurka from Coppelia and with tears rolling down her cheeks, she said: "I can hear the music!" So for the last six months of her life she was once again able to enjoy her great love of classical music, soft jazz and opera, even though she could not process the librettos.
In spite of these handicaps Gina threw herself into her love of language and, especially, of poetry. Before her strokes she did some book reviews on community radio and in newspapers. But her real love was poetry and she reworked poems she had already written and worked on new ones, culminating at the end of 2015 with the publication of White on White, a book of 47 very personal poems concentrating on her love of Alexandria and of travel, women's issues, relationships and, increasingly, her mortality and her advice to those left behind.
From her book, this is the poem Not Yet.
Hear the dull sound of church bells ring.
See the wind blow dead leaves in circles.
Sink lower into the warm bed.
I want to be out there,
Bothered by the sun.
Chasing the sticky flies away,
Watching the white masts list
Like toys on the lap of waves.
I want to know what happens next.
Would rather be with you
Above and not below.
Before thoughts drift away, my head droops
With pulse falling.
Remember me at least once
In a bloody while!
In her last year Gina was extremely busy with knitting, quilting and writing prose and even some new poems, obviously unpublished.
Ironically, Gina's last day – March 23 – was one of her best. Shaun and Penny dropped in unexpectedly then four close friends came for lunch, and Gina was happy, animated and toasted life and happiness.
Gina is survived by her husband, her siblings, her stepchildren and their spouses, her seven step-grandsons, her nieces and nephews and their children.
We will remember her a lot more than once in a bloody while.
* Dr Les Aisen was Gina's husband.