Written by Sheryl Herle of Toronto, Ontario – eldest granddaughter
of Marguerite.
On behalf of our family, I’d like to begin by extending a
sincere thank you to all of you for attending this service with our family
today.
I regret not being able to join everyone in person for this
special celebration and thank my cousin, Shanna, the youngest grand-daughter,
for volunteering to share this eulogy on behalf of us all.
While the passing of loved one is never easy, it is an
honour for me to be writing this tribute to our grandmother and sharing with
you a little more about how she touched each of our lives. “Granny” as she was
affectionately known to all of us, was a very special lady to 4 children, 9
grand-children and 8 great grand-children.
When we reflect back now on Granny’s life, a few key themes
emerge – the continual hard work she embraced; her selfless dedication to her
family; and her “keep calm and carry on” personality.
Coming into this world at the start of the Great Depression,
Granny never knew a life of wealth or abundance. As one of five children in a
typical Saskatchewan
farm family, Granny started to learn the art of planting, harvesting,
preserving and cooking from the time she was able to toddle down the rows in
the garden. By the time she was a young teen, she easily could have outdone
Martha Stewart with any household chore or baking contest! As a smart student who really enjoyed school,
Granny’s wish was to become a teacher. However, her family couldn’t afford to
keep her in school. As was the custom at the time, young women were quickly
presented with just a few choices as they approached adulthood – join the
convent, get married, or help the family out by getting a domestic job that
brought in a little income. Luckily for us, Granny was smart enough to find a
job as a household helper with the Reiter family – putting her natural talents
to use helping a family with 9 kids…..and also putting herself in the path of
her future husband!
I remember sitting with Granny one evening (I was old enough
to be invited into the evening ritual of sharing a Labbatt’s Blue at the kitchen
table) and I was pressing her for a romantic tale about how she’d met Grandpa.
As per Granny’s quiet personality…she didn’t offer many details but she did
describe how she would catch Louis watching her as she went about her chores.
At one point, there was a long pause and a grin…and then the story ended with
her saying “And then one day he asked me to a dance…”
Seems it was that easy!
By the time she was 20, she and Louis were staring down at one teeny
little Darlene – facing their first real life challenge as a couple in figuring
out how to sustain a very premature daughter long before neo-natal care was
offered. I am a little biased but I
think they did a great job of nurturing my “little mom” and then continuing to
expand their family with three more wonderful kids – Yvonne, Tim and Bernice.
As a young mother, Granny’s 20’s and 30’s were filled with
the usual motherly duties of diapers, feedings, laundry, cleaning, cooking
(including growing/raising all food), nursing sick kids, etc. Somehow she also
found time to volunteer with the CWL and make time for fun. We’ve all been
treated to a number of stories about the large family gatherings and the house
parties with their Tramping
Lake friends (with Grandpa
on the guitar and Uncle Pete pumping out a tune on the accordion).
I don’t remember the Tramping
Lake house but certainly came to love
spending time with Granny in their home in North
Battleford and at the cabin at Pelican Point. Once again, the
theme of hard work prevailed! Every nook and cranny in Granny’s two households
was spotlessly clean and incredibly organized. To us grandchildren, the house
and cabin were huge and full of little treasures. As adults, we now understand
the level of behind-the-scenes effort that Granny constantly went to in order
to ensure that her grandchildren’s favourites were on hand – whether that was a
simple package of balloons, The Old Maid cards in the china cabinet, a fresh
supply of garage sale comic books in the drawer at the cabin or our favourite
foods – the freezies, the cans of juice just for the kids, the Alpha Bits and
Cocoa Pebbles (always set out the night before alongside Grandpa’s Cornflakes),
the green mints and the Kraft caramels in the candy jar …and the endless supply
of cookies that Uncle Tim taught us to sneak straight out of the freezer!! Just
think about how many times she heard that candy jar lid tinkle but pretend she
didn’t notice we were filling our pockets, or how many times she would have
gone down to the freezer and smiled when she found half empty containers!
We now understand the love she was sharing with us through
every little thing she did for us. And…we can also look back and see right
through her master plan of getting deep into our hearts through our
stomachs!
Granny was never the kind of grandmother who pinched our
cheeks or smothered us in sloppy kisses (thank goodness!). She also wasn’t the
expressive or whiny type who’d phone and say, “I miss you. You haven’t visited
me in a week”. But, she’d be the first
to phone and subtly let you know that the bread dough was rising in that much
used enamel bowl, or that she was planning a traditional German meal on Friday.
She was crafty! She knew we’d be there in a jiffy! Feeding us was not just
about getting calories into us, it was her way of surrounding herself with her
family and keeping us close.
We certainly all learned to cook under her guidance but I
wonder if she knows how many other things we learned from her? There isn’t a
day that goes by where I don’t have a momentary thought about Granny – whether
I’m:
- at
the grocery store selecting a tomato (remembering how she taught me to
choose a good one as I’d crawl under the bed to pick from the ones
ripening in the dark),
- playing
solitaire on my Blackberry (a constant game at her table),
- puttering
around in my garden (just planted my morning glories after soaking the
seeds like she taught me),
- pulling
out one of her old mixing bowls to bake with my daughter,
- or, pulling out the sewing machine to mend a
seam and still being amazed that I made my own prom dress with her help in
grade 11.
We each have our own precious memories and will continue to
cherish all the little things we learned from her.
In closing, it seems only fitting to talk about the one big
thing I think we all learned from her…and that was her way of keeping calm and
carrying on no matter what life brought her way throughout her 84 years.
We saw her face everyday challenges like the messes we made
as we took out every toy in the boathouse and dragged sand into the cabin.
She’d never truly get angry with anything that happened…we might simply hear
“Ay, yi, yi – You kids are getting on my nerves”.
We also came to appreciate her practical solutions to
everyday challenges – like the night time chamber pot in the early days at the
cabin. I remember being grossed out and her simple solution was – “You can just
deal with it or get the flashlight and go outside”.
The same held true on hot summer days – her solution was to
deal with the heat by just sitting around in her bra and shorts. Why bother
with a tank top – we were family? (Sorry, Granny, I had to share that. It still
cracks us up to think of how fast you could dart back into the house to get a
shirt when the neighbour came over!)
We also know she faced some of life’s toughest challenges
with the bravest face and the same calm manner.
Whether it was the daily challenge of having to raise a family on a tight
budget, nursing sick kids (children and us grandchildren), supporting her adult
kids through their own challenges or caring for Grandpa in his final years and
then having to figure out how to reinvent her life as a widow… she faced it all
with grace.
She was a remarkably strong and capable lady who will be
missed by us all…
