|
Usually when old Victoria friends die, I go back into the Gazette archives to find and re-read their stories that were once so vivid to me and filled with detail. It's always a personal loss when these good people move, ever so quietly, oftentimes suddenly, from their Victoria homes to their heavenly homes. Funny it is how the connections remain intact years and years after the "interview." It becomes a friendship that's sorta hard to define.
I was saddened to hear that Ethel Sauter died on April 16th. I had just written her a letter the week before, for no special reason other than she was on my mind. Is it only a coincidence how these things happen? I don't think so. Our thoughts for and of each other are just one more sign of our mysterious connectedness.
A lady of letters was Mrs. Sauter, a teacher in Canada in the late 1920's, and a poet.
"I like poetry," she once said. "I love it, really." Then, because I recognized something hauntingly familiar, even mischievous, behind her sparkling eyes, and perhaps she in mine, we'd get the giggles together. We'd laugh until there were tears, yet neither of us could say just what was so very funny. She was contagious and I loved catching her.
I entitled her story, written in July of 1989, "Bloom Where You Are Planted." A plaque on her kitchen wall said:
A little home,
A garden plot,
I'll be content
With what I've got.
Among her greatest blessings was loving son Allan who lived with her on Lake Tamarack and who became her caretaker for the last several months of her life.
A generation ago another Victoria man took care of his mom until her final day on earth … and now that son, Jerome Zanger, died this past Saturday, April 29th, while out on his tractor. I entitled Jerome's story, written in December of 1988, "A Man by the Lake," for on a farm by Lake Wasserman is where this bachelor man spent his entire life.
When old timers talk about the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940, I always think of Jerome and how shocked he said he was to find his flock of ducks and geese flash-frozen dead into Lake Wasserman. It seems that sudden storm caught all living things by surprise.
I'm reminded also of Jerome's kitchen which had everything in it
-- not just the kitchen sink, but the washer, the dryer, the television. "I live in the kitchen," he told me during the interview.
Jerome, unmarried, cared for his mother at home until she died at the age of 93 in 1985. He once said to me, "We took care of each other, Mom and I. She used to do the cooking. Now I cook for myself. If it isn't no good, I can't complain to nobody now, can I!"
Today another bachelor cooks for himself. Allan Sauter called the very afternoon his mother died, to let me know the details, it seemed, that I might write the final chapter of her story ….
"She wouldn't eat or drink, but she was coherent the whole time. There were signs that the end was coming. I went to sleep that night, and I woke up at 4:52 in the morning. The first thing I did is go to check on my mother. I held her hand and said, 'Just let go and let God. You just go up to heaven now, Mom, and let God give you a little hug.' She died at 4:53."
Then he thoughtfully added, "I think it must have been an angel that woke me up this morning."
There was no reviewal of the body of Mrs. Sauter at the funeral home or at the family's church, United Methodist in Excelsior. Her son explained to me, "She didn't think I could handle that. She was more concerned about me than herself. Mom was a great lady. She always encouraged other people. She wanted to make life better for others."
Is there a more honorable mission than wanting to make life better for others? It's the nature of mothers -- and sons, too. How connected we are to each other in this wondrous family of humankind. Happy Mother's Day to all mothers, wherever you are, and thank you, sons -- and daughters -- for being good to us.
--Love, Sue
DEADLINE
The deadline for the next issue of the Gazette is Monday, May 22nd. You may send your news to Box 387 in Victoria, call me at 443-2010 or e-mail Sue@VictoriaGazette.com. Thank you always for thinking of the Gazette.
|
|
