"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact." (William James [1842-1910], in the conclusion to his essay "Is Life Worth Living?")
Because I was so young during the years of the biggest upheaval of my life as a refugee (1943-1947 -- see previous two blog posts), I can't recall any part of them. My parents rarely spoke of that time, but some stories were passed on to us.
Mom had mentioned that Wanda Kellermann, a young teenager, often babysat us while we were refugees in southern Germany. Wanda really bonded with my younger sister Irma, a one-year-old at the time. Mom had a picture of Wanda with Irma taken just before we left the refugee camp to go to Paraguay. Wanda was inconsolable when we left and wept bitterly. She and her widowed mother and sister stayed behind but were able to emigrate to Canada a few years later. That is all I knew about her.
A picture of Wanda and my sister Irma
One day while visiting Helen Penner, a close friend of ours in Waterloo, Ontario, she mentioned that she had just finished chatting with her best friend, Wanda Kellermann, in Winnipeg. My ears perked up at the name. "You know Wanda Kellermann?" I asked. "Yes," replied Helen, "she and I were teenagers in the refugee camp in Germany. We were best friends then, and have remained so to this day." I asked Helen for Wanda's phone number.
After we had returned to Winnipeg, I called her and my sister Irma and I went to visit her. Wanda has suffered from severe arthritis all of her life. The malnutrition she experienced during her teen years most likely contributed to make it worse. "Life was not easy as refugees," she told us, "but I will never forget the people I bonded with during that time." One of them was my grandmother, Katharina Kroeger, in her mid-forties at the time. Apparently my grandmother had taken an interest in the young people in the camp, taught them hymns and conducted Bible studies with them. Wanda talked about a Christmas celebration my grandmother planned that had made it the best Christmas of her life!
Since I'm currently writing stories about my early life for my grandchildren, I contacted Wanda again recently to ask her some questions about life in the refugee camps. She told me that, since attending regular exercise classes, her arthritis pain has diminished and she is able to get around much easier and is doing much better. She said she had an autograph book from refugee days and in it were several pages from my grandmother and my mom. She wanted me to have them. I received them in the mail on my birthday a week ago.
Just like my grandmother gave Wanda the best Christmas ever, so Wanda gave me the best birthday ever. And she didn't even know it was my birthday!
A card from Wanda
Dear Elfrieda! Thanks for the phone call about Zimmern (the town to which we were assigned as refugees). It aroused many good and sad memories. It was a hard time -- but a very blessed time too. God was very near us, all the times. I found my old autograph book. I tore out 3 pages from your Grandma, and your mother, they are very dear to me. And one picture of "Irmy" as a one-year-old. 72 years ago -- a lifetime lived through. Very hard but blessed times. May God bless the future. The best to your family and Irmy. Love, Wanda
Autograph pages my grandmother and my mother wrote and illustrated for Wanda
A book to which I've referred over and over again while writing the stories of my life for my grandchildren is Peter and Elfrieda Dyck's Up From the Rubble. I'm so grateful to the Dycks, not only for saving our lives and those of thousands of others (see my last three blog posts) but also for writing this book. They strongly believed in the value of each life they encountered!
This old dragon tree (its real name is Dracaena Marginata) often reminds Hardy and me that life is worth living even when we get old and bent out of shape! We received it as a tiny plant from one of my sisters when we moved to Winnipeg from Kitchener, Ontario in 2008. It got all straggly looking after I had taken it outside one summer; it looked like it was about to die and I wanted to throw it out. Hardy is a keeper and begged me to keep it, so it went into our bedroom. It somehow revived and even had another shoot growing out from the bottom and two 'babies' along the main stem!
And a lilac bush I planted five years ago bloomed for the first time this spring! I told myself that we would not leave this house until that lilac bloomed. And now it has. And we are still here.
"Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom."
(Jalaluddin Rumi, 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic scholar, and Sufi mystic)
