My Mother

For many years, more than forty, my mother suffered with MS. Actually the whole family suffered with it.

This last weekend, I was able to walk in the Lethbridge Walk to End MS with my daughter, Penny and my grandson, Jordan, and Penny's friends. The weather was great and we walked 10 kilometres. I am so thankful that at 53 years old, I can still walk 10 kms.

My mother was already confined to her bed for most of the day by the time she was 53. She survived until she was 72, thanks to my youngest sister, Judy and my dad. They looked after her long after the rest of us left home. My dad, especially took great pride in looking after our mom and both the parents have given us so much in the way of modelling faith in God and each other. When you think about it, they truly lived their lives in service to one another. I only hope that I can be half as dedicated to my family as they are/were to theirs.

God bless Mom! And thank you, God that we still have our Dad with us to remind us of the love one can have for another and for God.

Remembering Family Times

The one thing I remember most about my family - there are lots of us. In my immediate family, I have four sisters and two brothers (I lost one to a car accident 20 some years ago). These sisters and brothers all have families and we are scattered all about. I really don't know how that happened, as we were quite close growing up.

Sundays were the best days! After church, we'd often go visiting, especially in the summer. I remember going to Grandma and Grandpa Wiebe's in La Crete. Actually they lived in the country. They had animals: chickens, cows, and horses mostly. Grandma had a huge garden with all sorts of savory and sweet smelling plants. The cousins and brothers and sisters would play hide and seek in the garden until Grandma would call out the window for us to pick the weeds while we were in there. Well, we couldn't see any weeds, at least we didn't recognize any, so off we'd go to bug Grandpa. He'd take us for a ride in his buckboard behind the horse. They did have a car, but we loved to pretend we were in the wild west and Grandpa was only happy to go there with us too. In the winter, when we'd visit, Grandma would cook us pots of homemade soup and pile the chicken feet on a big plate on the table. I never did try them, but my uncles loved teasing us by chewing on a chicken foot in front of us. Grandma's homemade noodle soup and sauerkraut soup were the best. I've tried copying the recipe several times and I just can't get it right. Perhaps my pot is too small. :-)

Yes, visiting my mom's side of the family was always a big production. First of all, you need to imagine several families with at least 6 kids each all crowding around a hall sized kitchen table with benches all around. Then the smells of the wood cookstove in the manufacture of all sorts of homemade goodies, from bread to boiled chickens and desserts of all kinds. It didn't matter which house you went to in La Crete; if you were related to the Wiebe family, the crowds were relatively the same.

After the meal, the women would clean up and the men would go into the living room to smoke and talk about the farming, trucking, saw mills, etc. whatever industry they were in at the time. The kids would bring out the puzzles and games and toys and have contests with each other. Someone would bring out a guitar, a fiddle, or mouth organs and the singing would start. Wow! The noise of it all! The beautiful noise of it all.

Grandpa and Grandma Rosenberger

My dad's mom and dad were also faithful churchgoers. I believe they were also faithful Catholics. I don't ever remember my dad or any of his family talking bad about grandma and grandpa. They were both hard workers; I remember Grandpa Rosenberger as living in Edmonton for a period of time and then as a farm hand on my Uncle Frank's farm. Grandma kept a beautiful house and garden where ever she went.



Every Sunday that we lived in Fort Vermilion, I remember going to church and seeing them sit about the third or fourth pew from the front on the right hand side. When the choir would begin, both grandparents would sing. I could hear them both and see them with their chins raised and eyes closed, enjoying the music and the words of the church songs. I think this is where I began feeling at home in church. My whole family was there, from grandma and grandpa, to aunts and uncles, cousins, my own mom and dad and brothers and sisters.



Church was a time for worship and thanking God for our blessings. I never ran out of blessings to be thankful for and enjoyed the experience of church. This was the one day I could sit beside my mom or my dad and they had to sit there still too! I would lean on my mom's arm. Sometimes my dad would poke his elbow against me; I'd look up and he'd be grinning at me. Church and family went together hand in hand.



This last week, my husband and I spent our Easter vacation in Jamaica and we went to church at at liitle church called Immaculate Mary in Discovery Bay. It was wonderful to walk in and see the St. Joseph's Sunday missal at the door, the same mass book we use at home. The priest spoke better English than our priests from India back home. And the music had a reggae lilt to it. Loved it. Even John enjoyed the mass. It doesn't matter where you go in the world, the Catholic mass is the same, sometimes it's in a different language, but the prayers are the same, the format is the same and because of the Holy Eucharist, we feel at home no matter where we are. It was wonderful to celebrate Easter Sunday in that little church.