Losing Our Mother II – Your New Mother

Before I go on I want to make one clarification. These pieces about the loss of our mother are just that; they are not so much memories of her or stories about her life. Furthermore, and it probably hardly needs saying, these are my thoughts on the loss of our mother and its impact, which has turned out to be more far reaching than one would have anticipated all those many years ago at the time our mother went to be with her Lord and Saviour. Each of my four siblings has their own memories of all of this, and they do not necessarily coincide with what I remember, think or feel.

At the end of my first chapter in this essay, I talked of our family’s resuming ‘life’ after the loss of our mother. Father continued his work with the Mennonite Church’s urban mission outreach, as it was then still called, with native people, again, as they were then called. We children finished our school years in June 1964. For me, that meant high school graduation and deciding what was to come after that.

In July of that year we got our first inkling of a significant new development in our family life. Father made it known that he was too lonely as a widow trying to raise us five and wanted to marry. Furthermore, he already had his sights on, and had indeed spoken with, a young woman in our church whom we knew. Her name was Anne Thiessen and we older three knew her through our belonging to the youth/young adult program and choir of our church. She was somewhat of a ‘sponsor’ of the former and member with my sister Loretta and I of the latter. Dad had been getting to know her better through his being on our church’s council where she was treasurer.

On July 20 – it’s in my diary, as I discovered recently – Dad asked what I thought about remarriage. I am not sure he mentioned Anne specifically. I thought I had a memory of his asking the three older ones of us way back around February. Now, I’m not sure about that idea. Anyway, was I going to flat out say no?

The secret was soon out. Honestly, I think we were all more intrigued by the idea than that we had or shared negative thoughts about the prospects. We got to go on dates with Dad and Anne. What’s not to enjoy for a family in the summer when you get to go to a powwow (on the prairie outside of Stoney Mountain Penitentiary, mind you, because of father’s connections with indigenous inmates) and a picnic after. Or a day trip to the Peace Gardens, or the Whiteshell – with picnic lunches. 

Meanwhile, I started my first year at Canadian Mennonite Bible College, commuting the 13 miles by bus. This meant leaving home at 6:20 and getting home just in time for supper. A wedding date was set and plans put in motion. Sister Loretta was designated as Maid of Honour and myself as Groomsman. Before we knew it, October 17 rolled around and after a marriage in Bethel Mennonite Church and a reception, we had a new Mom. My siblings remember Dad coming home and telling us this was our new Mom, we should give her that honour and put our biological mother out of the picture, or words to that effect. Sounds somewhat harsh, and maybe it was the impact that caused it to be so remembered (Maybe father did not want us to use the word 'stepmother' and, indeed, I do not remember using this word till years later, and then only outside of our parents' hearing). How little did we know at the time how true this request was going to become over time. 

Anne worked hard at being a Mom for 5 chidden from 7 - 17. If my memory serves me well she even altered my trousers to go with changing fashions. She might even have helped me type up some college homework. Understandably, things did not go totally smoothly. My siblings complained of too many casserole suppers… of not being able to always have seconds… or even meals if they came home too late. As the oldest, whose bedroom was next to ‘the folks’ for a while, I recall overhearing hard discussions between our ‘folks’ with dad trying to encourage our new Mom. For my part, I remember trying to get my younger siblings to go easier on our new Mom.

The following autumn, 1965, I moved into residence for my last two years at the college. From then on, apart from weekends (and not even all of those) and summers at home – and even then, I was out working on a farm in Alberta all of one summer (1966) – my relationship with my parents gradually changed to being one of a guest. Two months after I graduated from college in the spring of 1967 they moved to Saskatchewan. I saw them once more that summer and then not again till Christmas. After that, it was not until I also moved to Saskatchewan in the spring of 1968. Thereafter, it was the usual occasional weekend, perhaps Thanksgiving, usually Christmas and Easter visits etc. Our own biological mother had faded into history it seemed, at least for me.

Losing Our Mother

I have been thinking about writing this for some time. Sometimes writing of this nature helps bring closure to a situation. It can be somewhat cathartic, perhaps healing. A past trauma can be dealt with. 

Losing our mother had a beginning in a certain point in time. However, as life has continued to unravel in this area, I realized that losing one’s mother does not necessarily come to an end. At least, not in this life.

It was in Winnipeg; December 14, 1963. I was in Grade XII. Mother had experienced an exciting fall getting back into teaching after eighteen years. I remember how pleased she was to be able to put on a lovely white blouse over a grey wool skirt, pin on a favourite brooch, and get back into the classroom. She was just 43-years-old.

We were deep into winter – snow, freezing temperatures. Christmas was coming. We had a tree up in front of our ‘picture window,’ with lights encircling it. Something new and fascinating was a little coupling, between light cord and socket, that caused the ‘Christmas lights’ to flash off and on intermittently. My younger brothers were playing in our living room, where stood the tree, and were bothered by the on-and-off feature, so it was ‘off.’

Our parents were preparing to go to a Christmas social at our church. They were going to pick up Dad’s brother, Uncle Victor, and his wife, Aunt Margaret, who was, coincidentally, mother’s cousin. They had just moved to Winnipeg. The women of our church were putting this social on and their husbands were their guests. Our parents were excited to go; it was their first such outing since moving to the city some sixteen months earlier. 

When they had dressed, and passed by my room at the top of the stairs, I asked mother whether we couldn’t leave the intermittent light switch ‘on.’ I thought it helped make our place more noticeable to passersby. I think she asked me to consider my brothers and we said goodbye and I turned to my homework and they continued down the staircase and left.

A few hours later I heard the door open and steps on the stairs. I turned to my bedroom door and there was father, with Uncle Victor right behind. Father had a pained expression on his face. It was as if he was choking on the first words that came out of his mouth, “Your mother’s dead,” he said. 

The rest of the evening, and indeed, much of the days that followed, remains a blur in my memory. I do have a diary that I kept, that I can refer to, but I don’t want to be obsessive about details here.

We children, there were five of us in school, quite school a week earlier than our peers for ‘Christmas break.’ Our grandparents, our uncles and aunts, friends from church, were in and out of our home. They brought food or prepared it at our place. They helped look after us – my youngest sibling was 7-year-old Tim – while also helping father with the necessary arrangements for things like a funeral and burial.

When a funeral home had been secured – Loewen’s of Steinbach, whom I discovered later, had longtime connections with our parents – father took us children to view our mother’s body, nicely dressed and lying in a casket. I remember how gray she looked… I had my little camera along and took a picture. 

Besides our grandparents – mother’ parents from Winkler and Dad’s from Clearbrook (now part of Abbotsford), BC, other uncles and aunts came to the city. Uncle Henry and Esther Born and their family were traveling back from South America where they were in mission work, to BC, and made a last minute detour to Manitoba.

Then came the day for the funeral, held not in our church, Winnipeg Bergthaler Mennonite, but in the larger more distant Bethel Mennonite. It was bitterly cold - minus thirty degrees. A long black limousine came to pick us up to go on the long ride to the church. I had mixed feelings about riding in this car – there was the element of luxury for a teenage car nut like myself at the time – but it came with death. 

After the funeral, of which I remember nothing, we again rode the limousine to Brookside Cemetery out by the airport for mother’s internment. Our family and friends huddled around the gravesite while last words were spoken in the fading winter sunlight. Then it was back to the church for a reception, which was the custom. All I really remember of that was our Aunt Ruby (Dad’s older brother Peter’s wife) Brandt’s mother, Mrs. Robinson, coming up to me to give me a big hug and express her condolences. I don’t recall anyone else doing that. Hugs were not yet common in the Mennonite repertoire of social behaviour. As I write, it is only days since I shared that memory with Aunt Ruby, now 97, long-since widowed, and my cousin Shirley, her daughter, on a visit to them in Houston, Texas, where they now live.

Then it was on into the New Year, 1964. Distant relatives went home. However, we continued to get a lot of support from especially mother’s parents and siblings and their families. Mother’s youngest sister Marian was still single and in the city and she came over a lot to help with household tasks. Loretta, next youngest to me at 15, our only sister, went through an accelerated period of learning to do more of the tasks considered women’s work in those days.

We went back to school, except for me! I had contracted mumps somehow during this period of time, and so was a couple of weeks late returning to classes – at the new River East Collegiate in North Kildonan, where we had moved six months earlier.

Life continued. There was no talk of what we had just experienced. Of course, family and friends showed their support and care in the ways already described. There was no lack of love. However, I don’t recall anyone expressing any particular concern for how we were all doing. There was no processing of our experience. There was certainly no grief counseling, as there often is nowadays. That was something unknown in our circles. 

We had lost our mother, traumatically, long before we should have. That’s all we knew. Were we in shock? Is that why I have so little memory of this all? Were we in denial? Was that the only way to cope? It seems we all just closed the wound as quickly and as best as we could in our own ways and carried on. 

To be continued