I Lost My Brother

A long time ago I lost my brother.

Hansi (John) was born in Paraguay in February 1949. Two years before his birth our family was part of a group of Mennonite refugees who had fled war-torn Germany to arrive at one of the most sparsely inhabited areas in South America, the Paraguayan Chaco. Together, these Mennonites built a number of villages there under extreme pioneer conditions.

Hansi was a heavy baby. My sister Irma on the left, carrying the brunt of the burden while I pose for the photo!

When Hansi was two years old, my mother was expecting her sixth child and had an over-whelming work load every day. My sister Irma and I were six and eight years old and were in charge of our two little brothers, Bernie (4) and Hansi (2). We just wanted to play with our dolls and our dishes, and the boys kept spoiling our fun! Finally, I was exasperated and had a bright idea. I suggested to Irma that we tie them up so they would stop bothering us. She went along with the plan. I don’t remember what we used or how we managed to do this, but somehow we did and then happily played, ignoring their cries. After a while we went to check on them and they were gone. When we couldn’t find them, we had to go tell our mother who was very upset with us. When she asked us where they might be, we had no answer. It reminds me of Cain’s response to God’s question about where his brother Abel was after he had murdered him: “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4.1-9)

Although we sometimes felt like doing so, we had not murdered our brothers! Everyone was relieved when they were finally found wandering around in the kafir field, well hidden among the tall stalks. The four of us learned to play together with our dishes and our dolls. We had treats (raisins and cocoa powder mixed with water and sugar) and the boys were the dad and the big brother. Hansi especially loved treats and we could get him to do almost anything for a sweet reward.

There was a streak of mischief in our Hansi. His big green eyes would twinkle and his whole face would light up. Sometimes this happened at very serious occasions. I remember a village funeral which we all attended. Hansi decided he was hungry and began to demand his favorite food, fried eggs!
Some of the women put their fingers to their lips and shook their heads with a very stern look on their faces. He was not intimidated but imitated them exactly, furrowing his brow and shaking his head. They had to laugh in return and some benches shook inappropriately.

Hansi was three and a half years old when we arrived in Canada in October of 1952. When he was just beginning school, we almost lost him again due to a burst appendix. He spent weeks in a big city hospital away from his family. Doctors and nurses became his best friends. When he returned, he caught up to his classmates in no time and easily rose to the top of the class.

Hansi, front left, ready to go back to school after his near-death experience

As an adult John became a successful businessman, but he always had a big heart for his employees. Children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews loved their Dad, their Opa, and their Uncle John.

In his senior years he retired in Texas. The neighbours all knew the friendly man who went for a walk every morning. Then one morning he didn’t show up. 
On Wednesday, April 3, John woke up unwell and spent the day in hospital; doctors and nurses frantically worked to get rid of blood clots, but there were too many and by evening he was gone.

I lost my little brother again but this time he’s not coming back. In birth order John is number five and it feels like some of us should have gone before him.
I picture him, running through a field of kafir, mischief in his green eyes.

Farewell Hansi! I will see you again!

Sister Love

Lately I have again been going through old correspondence. This time it is a box of letters my Dad received from his two older sisters in Russia.

As I go through these letters, I have the feeling that their story needs to be told, and that Tina and Greta (Katarina and Margareta Neufeld) are asking me to tell it. Theirs is a love story, about that unadulterated agape love that is so hard to put into practice and yet seemed to be part of their DNA. They never married, they just looked after their four little brothers and supported each other. Their father died of typhoid fever in 1920 (when he was only 48), as bandits roamed through Russian villages leaving disease and destruction behind them. Their mother was left to care for six young children, and she was not well. Tina and Greta learned responsibility at a young age.

Four years later, at age 47, their mother died. There was support from the Mennonite community around them and from relatives, but a lot of the burden of looking after the family fell on the shoulders of these two older sisters. Perhaps it was because of the hardships they went through together that they formed a bond that lasted a lifetime.

Tina and Greta in the middle, with their four brothers. My father (the second youngest) is second from the right.

I don’t remember these precious aunts because we were separated before I was two years old, and we never saw each other again.

The photo above was taken in North Germany in 1944. My parents are standing in the back; I am in my mother's arms. Tina and Greta are on the left in the middle row, their sister-in-law on the right.

At the time the above picture was taken, no one knew that we would never see each other again. We were refugees, desperately fleeing the advancing Russian army. The Russians had made an agreement with the Americans and the British that all those who had fled from Ukraine would be returned. My father knew what that meant -- slave labor in Russia's vast north. He insisted that we move south as quickly as possible. His sister-in-law, however, refused to leave. She said that her husband (conscripted into the German army at the time) knew where she was, and if she left he would perhaps never find her. Tina and Greta decided they could not leave her alone, and would stay behind as well. This decision sealed their fate. The Russians came and they were sent back. Our family went south, eventually boarding the Volendam at Bremerhaven, headed for Paraguay. Five years later we emigrated to Canada.

My father was the only one of his entire family to escape being returned to Russia. Some of his nieces and nephews have since immigrated to Germany and Hardy and I have had the opportunity to talk with them about their experiences. At times they were so hungry that they were at the point of starvation, but gradually times got better. My cousins, the two little girls in the photo above, told me that they lost their mother when they were young teens and the woman their father then married was not kind to them. At one point, on a visit to Tina and Greta's place, they refused to go home and begged their aunts to take them in. So, once again, the aunts looked after family.

The letters I am reading now were written when the sisters were in their seventies. They were still looking after children, at this time the children of their nieces and nephews. In spite of the hardships they endured, they lived until their early eighties.

My father didn't talk much about his sisters. Perhaps there was guilt and a feeling that he had abandoned them, but he knew what he had to do for his own family. He made an effort to have them emigrate to Canada but by the time he had secured the papers they could no longer make that journey. He always wanted his daughters to be named after his sisters, but for a variety of reasons that didn't happen until the youngest of his eight children was born; she received both of their names -- Margaret Katherine. She is the only one in our family to have two names. She is certainly doing her part to live up to the names she was given by raising twin daughters as a single mom and being a huge support to the children brought into her life through her second marriage. I tease her that some day she might be looking after her older siblings as well!

”History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” 

                                                                                                                 Maya Angelou

A Key Experience

Happy Valentine’s Day!

“You have the key to my heart!” 

I’m sure most of you who celebrated Valentine’s Day when you were youngsters received at least one valentine that had the above comment or one like it.

Just recently Hardy and I had a day that caused us to ponder the significance of keys.
It was a Wednesday and the day began with a "key" reference. We like to start our day by reading from “Rejoice!” (a quarterly inter-Mennonite journal with daily devotionals).

We read about Peter, whose relationship with Jesus moved from confession (a declaration that he believed Jesus was the "Messiah, the Son of the living God") to denial (not long after, Peter denied even knowing Jesus) to return (again declaring his love and devotion to Jesus and his willingness to help build the church).
The writer of the devotional (Jennie Wintermote) drew the conclusion that God’s love for Peter never stopped. In fact, Jesus said to him, "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; what you prohibit on earth will be prohibited in heaven, and what you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven." (Matthew 16.19)

We wondered how an unreliable and fallible human being could be trusted with such a great honour. Peter himself must have wondered exactly what that meant. Jesus went on to explain that this was not about power and control but about self-sacrificial love (Matthew 16.24-25), and that anyone who was willing to embrace it would receive the same promise that was given to Peter (16.18-19).

After we read this significant passage about keys, we went about our day. Hardy had some errands and shopping to do and I went to church to look after children while their mothers had a Community Kitchen event. The smells coming from the kitchen were incredible, and following the session for that day I received a dinner to take home with me. My friend dropped me off and I fumbled with my house keys and all the stuff I was carrying. It was one of the coldest days we have had this winter and I was anxious to get into the house.

Hardy got home just before me. He had a "key" story to tell me. While shopping he suddenly realized his set of keys were missing. He retraced his steps, looked everywhere, but couldn’t find them. Finally he went to customer service and ... someone had turned them in! He was so relieved.
I listened to his story and thankfully did not remind him that he should have taken the phone with him so he could call someone, or that he should have the keys somehow connected to his wallet, etc.

Just after Hardy finished telling me his story, the doorbell rang. I went to answer it and the person who does our snow shovelling held up my set of keys and said he had found them in the door! We just looked at each other incredulously. That man could have walked away with our keys and we would never have been the wiser. (Hardy also refrained from lecturing me!)

What is interesting to us is that this all happened in one day. Which got me thinking about keys and their significance.

Keys are such an important part of our lives, I'm sure there are many "key" stories out there. Feel free to share them!

Christmas in Retrospect

Normally, January is a time to make new resolutions, plans for the new year, etc. However, I’m in 'looking-back' mode, still thinking about Christmas and enjoying the memories.

About a week before Christmas I was chatting with our oldest grandchild, Ben (18), who is attending the University of Winnipeg. He told me about a lunch he and his family had enjoyed at his aunt’s house -- at which she had used a recipe from the cookbook Together.
Following the huge fire that destroyed an apartment building in London, England in 2017, a community kitchen was opened for the women affected by this tragedy so that they would have a space to cook food for their families. Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, wanted to help, and she visited the kitchen. Eventually, the women created a cookbook with help from the Royal Foundation. It is dedicated “to all those whose lives were impacted by the fire at Grenfell Tower.”

I had read news of the fire and also of the resulting creation of a community kitchen and a cookbook. I was curious about the recipes in this cookbook. Ben asked me if I would like to have it for Christmas, and I said I would love it. So, waiting for me under the tree was this special gift he had ordered through the internet.

Ben could not have known that, many years ago shortly after we lost our first child, I would receive a cookbook which for some mysterious reason helped me in my emotional healing process. It was a Betty Crocker recipe book with beautiful pictures and I read it from cover to cover. It brought me back to life. So in my opinion, cookbooks are not just for cooking. They also have other purposes.
I resonate with what Marlene Epp said in her presentation “Cookbook as Metaphor” at a recent conference here in Winnipeg  (A people of Diversity: Mennonites in Canada since 1970):

                           “We  need more Mennonite cookbooks and less theologians.”

Ben’s sister, Kathryn (age 13) had made her own unique gift for her Opa and Oma and we will be enjoying it throughout the year together with her. It is a homemade coupon book in which she has listed all our favorite activities. We can use her coupons at special occasions, choosing one which will give us the opportunity to do an activity together with her (for example: playing a game, visiting a restaurant or a park or a bookstore, etc.) -- thus enjoying the coupons throughout the year!!

The "sleepover" coupon is free and the last coupon reads, "No expiry date" ! 

Sasha (9) did some Christmas shopping at her school's rummage sale. She bought me a beautiful little teapot and a glass plate. The lid of the teapot had become unhinged, but Opa was able to fix it. It has a special place on a kitchen shelf where I can see it every day and remember the love between us.

Sasha and Kathryn enjoying our Christmas celebration!

The grandchildren in Ontario did not forget us either. From them we received a special picture frame:

The photo in the frame above was taken in 2013. 

How quickly they grow!

A happy new year 2019, and remember to hug and kiss your children and grandchildren !

Gotcha last, Ivan !!

Christmas Miracles

Christmas is coming and I want to talk about small miracles. They happen to me occasionally. In fact, one just occurred the other day.
My Christmas miracle is very small compared to the huge world-changing event of the birth of Jesus. But it is also big because it gave me peace of mind. It is about a pre-lit Christmas tree. We bought one three years ago because it was easy to set up and I didn't have to wait for Hardy to put on the lights. I like to put up the tree for the first Sunday of Advent.

When I plugged in the lights, this is what I saw!

One of the light strings was not working (about two thirds of the way up the tree). Now what? All lights had worked fine the first two years. Hardy set about trying to fix things by attempting to find out which bulbs were defective. He had to test each bulb (of a 48-bulb string!) and replace the ones which didn't allow the current to pass. In the process, another string of lights went out! By now we were well past First Advent and this was not good. Maybe we would just do without a tree this year. Struggling with this problem, I decided to let it go:
"Just give me your peace, God, and help me to see things in perspective. Christmas is not about having a perfect Christmas tree. It is about your perfect love and showing that love to others. I will be happy even if all the lights aren't on."

The next morning, following Hardy's efforts of replacing bulbs, the second string of lights came back on. But the section nearer to the top of the tree was still dark. Hardy was at the end of his wits and I suggested we would just add more decorations. We left the lights on and went to have our breakfast. When we got up from the table, I went into the living room and, lo and behold, the entire tree was lit up! All 240 lights were burning brightly! How did that happen? I couldn't believe it! There must be an explanation for this, but I have my own conclusion!

Now I could happily decorate the tree.

"The key is handing over the burden to God, where it belongs, and accepting the peace that this world cannot give." (Kathy Kalina, quoted by April Yamasaki in her December blog post)

People might laugh at me and call me naive. I’m okay with that, because Christmas itself is a small miracle — a tiny baby born to a young couple in a cave — and yet so completely life- and world-altering that it becomes huge.

Suspending disbelief, shepherds and magi went to see for themselves what they heard. I wonder what they thought as they knelt beside that manger. Everything was just as the angel had said and they were amazed.
Mary kept thinking about all these things, wondering what they meant. She would encounter many miracles in her life with Jesus.
Joseph had experienced his own miracle. As he was processing all that Mary had told him and wondering about quietly calling off the wedding, an angel came to him in a dream and told him to go ahead with it. (Matthew 1.19-21)

Perhaps it was easier to believe in miracles 2,000 years ago than it is today. What would have astonished the world at that time is no big deal to us: electricity, automobiles, airplanes, flush toilets (to name a few of the 'wonders' we take for granted). These are all part of our normal life today and we accept them as such. All have plausible explanations and can be scientifically proven. "No big deal." Miracles of another kind will be happening in the next century and they will seem ordinary to our great-grandchildren. Every century has its miracles.

I will share another small miracle with you, but it, too, is actually big and wonderful. My father always said a prayer before meals. He prayed in German because that was his heart language:

Komm, Herr Jesu, sei du unser Gast

und segne was du uns bescheret hast.

Translation:  Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest

                and bless what you have given us.

Some of Opa's grandchildren did not understand German, but they obviously understood what was happening. One of them was Shara. One day Shara claimed that Opa prayed especially for her because at the end of his prayer he mentioned her name every time. We were all puzzled by this until someone solved the riddle: The second syllable of the word bescheret is pronounced like the name Shara!

Shara's limited understanding of German is like our limited understanding of God. We can never grasp the breadth and height and depth of it. The important thing is that we know God calls us by name. Opa had all his grandchildren in mind when he prayed, but to recite 20 names each time would have been a rather long prayer when there are hungry children at the table!

Advent Prayer

"Every year we celebrate the holy season of Advent, O God.

Every year we pray those beautiful prayers of longing and waiting

and sing those lovely songs of hope and promise.

Every year we roll up all our needs and yearnings and faithful expectations into one word: 'COME!'

And yet, what a strange prayer this is! 

After all, you have already come and pitched your tent among us. 

You have already shared our life with its little joys, its long days of tedious routine, its bitter end. 

Could we invite you to anything more than this with our 'Come'?

Could you approach any nearer to us than you did when you became the 'Son of Man'?

In spite of all this we still pray: 'Come.' "

                                                                                                      -Karl Rahner

[from Sojourners and Bruderhof Communities online (cited in Wayne Holst's Colleagues List blog)]

May God's peace abide in your heart and home this Christmas!

In November We Remember -- A Story of Love and Loss

Until this year no one in our family knew what happened to our maternal grandfather, Abram Kroeger, after he was taken from his home in Chortitza, Ukraine one dark November night on March 13, 1938. He was 46 years old, a young man with a wife and five children. He was accused of a crime he never committed, and arrested by the NKVD (the successor to the Cheka or state security police, a Soviet agency founded in 1917 to combat counterrevolution and sabotage).

This summer my three brothers took a trip to Ukraine to see what they could discover. They went to the state archives in Zaporozhye. These archives were made accessible to scholars and the public by legislation submitted to the Ukrainian Duma (parliament) by president Petro Poroshenko in 2015.

My brothers at the Ukrainian state archives with their interpreters

What my brothers discovered was quite amazing and the news stunned us all. I wrote about it in a blog post in July, entitled Forget-Me-Not.

There was no supporting evidence to the accusation and my grandfather's arrest was based solely on charges made by a fellow Mennonite who had provided the NKVD with a long list of names of men who he claimed belonged to a German revolutionary organization. It appears that my grandfather's accuser made the accusations in exchange for his freedom, and no such organization existed. My grandfather, no doubt under duress and torture, signed his name, admitting to these charges. Abram Kroeger was executed by shooting at 8:30 p.m. on November 14, 1938, in Dnipropetrovsk where he was buried. He was exonerated by the Ukrainian government on August 7, 1989, cleared of all charges.

On November 12 my sisters and I met together to honor our grandfather's life and to light a candle. We remembered a grandfather we never knew, except through photos and what others had told us about him. From my mother we have the impression that he was a quiet and gentle man. He loved music and he enjoyed creating things with his hands. Mom recalled that Opa had carved doll furniture for her and her cousins. A descendant of the Kroeger clockmakers, he was a craftsman and his work was precise.

We are five sisters and we each lit a candle for a grandfather we never met. The small booklet behind the women is entitled Vergissmeinnicht which is the German word for forget-me-not. In this booklet my grandmother wrote important important dates and events; she had entered the date of my grandfather's arrest. I was now able to add the date of his death in that same booklet (see my July blog posting).

My mother recalled that their family had a small hand organ in their home and she often heard her father playing a song which she thought was probably his favorite. The song is Ännchen von Tharau. Originally it was a 17-stanza poem, composed in 1637 by the Prussian poet Simon Dach to celebrate the marriage of a friend. It was set to music by organist Heinrich Albert (1604-1651). Later (in the 18th century) Johann Gottfried von Herder translated the poem into modern German.

My sister and I found the song on YouTube and played it as we thought of our grandfather.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAS0gEgk-iU

Below, you will see my translation of the final stanza of Ännchen von Tharau. It is especially poignant when I think about my grandparents' love for each other and how they were torn apart, pawns of those who had no respect for human life and dignity. My Oma never spoke much about her husband or about the hardships she endured, but I believe his spirit did follow her on her long trek through Poland, Germany, Paraguay, and finally to Canada.

If you were ever from me to be torn

To live were the sun never shines in the morn,

I would follow you over land and sea,

Iron and prison and worst enemy!
Ännchen von Tharau, my light and my sun,
For me you are always the only one!

Würdest du gleich einmal von mir getrennt

Lebtest du, da wo man die Sonne kaum kennt

Ich will dir folgen durch Länder, durch Meer

Eisen und Kerker und feindliche Heer!

Ännchen von Tharau, mein Licht, meine Sonn'

Mein Leben schließ ich um deines herum!

Home

We have just returned from an autumn visit to our children in Ontario. It was a beautiful drive along the shore of Lake Superior where a stunning display of golds and reds and dark greens contrasted with white trunks of birch.

Whenever we take this trip to Ontario, going the Canadian way instead of the American, a song I learned in Grade 3 as a new Canadian hums through my head and I have to sing it:

Land of the silver birch

Home of the beaver

Where still the mighty moose
Wanders at will
Refrain: Blue lake and rocky shore

I will return once more
Boom-diddy-ah-da, boom-diddy-ah-da, boom-boom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zDTdKRqZ9g

This Canadian folk song dates from the 1920s and is a romanticized version of nature and the land from the perspective of an Aboriginal person (Wikipedia).

Our daughter and her family in Heidelberg, Ontario (with four children aged 9-15) have moved from a turn-of-the-century farmhouse to a bungalow just down the road. They were in the throes of moving when we arrived. It reminded me of the moves our family made as I was growing up.

When we were still homeless refugees in Germany, fleeing the Russians by constantly moving from the northeast to the southwest, one of my earliest childhood memories is not that of a home; rather, it is that of my mother singing a German children’s song to us, comparing an apple to a house (In meinem kleinen Apfel ). The five rooms in the house are the little pockets that hold the seeds and the seeds are the inhabitants of the house. They dream of the sunshine and of some day hanging on a lovely Christmas tree:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g0TPzqqaZM

My mother was yearning for a home of our own when she sang that song to her children and imagining what it would be like to celebrate Christmas with her family in peace and harmony. We, her little ones, felt her love and care and that was home enough for us.

I was four years old when we settled into the first home I can remember, in the Paraguayan Chaco. This house did not have five rooms as the apple does for its seeds. It was made of mud and brick and had a thatched roof. My mother longed for something better for her family. She wanted a house with several rooms and a Christmas tree in December, with real apples hanging from it. We had one straggly tree in our yard and there were no apples.

Our small adobe hut in Paraguay. I am seated on the right.

When we first settled in Alberta in October of 1952, we were six siblings with a seventh due in January. Our first home was a two-story farmhouse in the country that we rented for most of that year, near a school within walking distance. We were there for about nine months and then we moved to the nearby town of Didsbury where my father found employment in a creamery. We rented another large house for the rest of that year, then moved across the street for a few months to a bungalow, much too small for our growing family. Finally, Dad bought a house just down the street; our family lived there for the next ten years or so before moving to Winnipeg. They bought a bungalow in North Kildonan and stayed there for the rest of their lives. I lived in that house four years.

Following our marriage, we too made our home in several different countries: Elkhart, Indiana; Brussels, Belgium; Kikwit and Kinshasa, Zaïre/Congo; Kitchener, Ontario; and back to Winnipeg for our retirement years. The difference from the experience of our parents is that we moved by choice. I'm so thankful for that, and for the freedom we have had to make these choices.

As I was thinking about home and homelessness, it occurred to me that the people about whom the song Land of the Silver Birch was written, the original inhabitants of our country, were forced from their homes by fellow Canadians to live in places not of their choice and made to attend schools where their identity was taken from them. We need to remember this and work at making sure that Canada gives freedom of choice to all Canadians.