Grandmama's Obituary

Marie Evelyn Burnett, passed beyond the veil to join family and loved ones October 31, 2008 at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital succumbing to several cancers. She was surrounded by her children as she quietly slipped from this life.
Marie was a pioneer in every sense of the word. She was born March 10, 1924 in rural northern Minnesota in Green Valley Township to Oscar and Amalia Bjelland. She lost her mother a few months after she was born and was raised by her maternal grandparents Matti and Anna Pietila and their 11 children. Her older sister Norma and brother Franklin were raised by their dad, Oscar. Marie was raised on a farm, enjoying many Finnish and Norwegian traditions and foods. She attended grades 1-8 in a one-room schoolhouse, graduating in the Class of 1942 from Menahga High School. In 2007 she attended her 65th high school reunion.
Marie, her brother Franklin and sister Norma all got married in 1943. Marie married a handsome local boy, Wilfred Jacobson. The couple moved to California when Willy joined the Merchant Marines during WWII where their first daughter Cathy was born. Marie moved back to the Jacobson farm in Minnesota where their second daughter Judy was born in 1945.
After the war, Willy and Marie and their two daughters moved to Butte, Montana to work in the mines. After reading an article about Alaska, the young family decided that the adventures awaiting them in Alaska were too hard to resist. Willy “ Jake” landed a job in Suntrana working for Cap Lathrop in the coal mines near Healy.
Marie flew up later with the two girls landing in Ladd Field where the current Noel Wien Library is located. Marie enjoyed sharing her pioneer experiences of raising a family in the Last Frontier with her children and grandchildren. She often spoke about the kindness and generosity of Cap Austin E. Lathrop. After Cap Lathrop died, Jake and Marie moved the family to Palmer where Cindy (1954) and Jeff (1957) were born. After many years of working as a game guide and taxidermist, Jake was hired to work on the new Alaska Marine Highway System and the family moved to Ketchikan. After Jake died in 1969, Marie, Cindy and Jeff moved to Fairbanks in 1971, where later Marie married Everett Burnett. Marie loved Alaska and even though her travels took her to other homes in Idaho, California and Oregon, Alaska was always “home.”
Life was a school teacher to Marie and she was well versed in making ends meet and dealing with all number of hardships and challenges, from growing large vegetable gardens and keeping them moose free to canning wild game and fish and baking prize winning bread in a wood cookstove. Her children remember times that money was short but they weren’t aware of the shortage because she made life fun and exciting being so creative with the little that they had. Marie loved life and her children were her life; Cathy, Judy, Cindy and Jeff were the jewels in her crown of whom she was always proud. Her children grew into 13 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild who filled her life with untold delight! Buggum or grandma was a very hip grandma who always knew what was cool and her gift boxes brought great joy and amazement to all recipients. She was a generous, concerned, and loving woman and anyone she called her friend, was a friend for life. She never missed birthdays, anniversaries or other important events in her family’s lives. She would greet each day by singing good morning and Happy Birthday to the pictures of her kids and grandkids as she dusted their pictures. She said she was “washing their faces to get them ready for the day.” Kindness and caring was the essences of her existence.
The emptiness created in the hearts of her family is immense for such a tiny woman but our memories are filled with love. This shy woman impacted all she met. It is difficult to imagine life without Marie but we are grateful she is no longer in pain. The hole in our hearts is filled with the knowledge that she is with her family and friends in the arms of the Lord. No one will ever take her place and we look forward to the day when we once again feel her kiss and hear her ever present, “I love you!” She is a one of a kind and we are all better people for being blessed to be part of her life. A celebration of her life will be on Saturday, November 29th 6:30 pm at Holiday Heights.

(From Me, I wish I could be there....byebye, Grandmama....)

Honestly, I'm ok...I think... ;)

So I got an email the other day that made me think...I then looked back on the my last posts and it was confirmed that people could think 'Aaron is not very happy and is fixated on death and war right now'.

;)

Just to check in folks, I am just fine, I think :) It's just that that is what happened to be in my life at the time, i.e. Grandmama's passing and then the anniversary of Kristallnacht, etc.

So I include this beautiful sunrise of my Funkturm (Radio Tower) here in Berlin. Isn't it pretty? I enjoyed this fiery/red all over the sky moment very much so and thought I'd share.

Just to let you all know folks - life is beautiful and it's worth living! ;)

My vote is - let's keep enjoying what we've been given - there is a lot of goodness, beauty and joy out there to be experienced....

Volkstrauertag (Volks = People's; trauer = mourning; tag = day) = People's Mourning Day

Today in all of Germany is Volkstrauertag or, roughly, the equivalent of the American 'Memorial Day'. It began as a way to remember the soldiers of WWI; later used to remember WWII; and sometimes used by others to remember 'all the dead'.

I remember reading an Ensign article from Pres. Monson where he explained how he likes to visit graveyards wherever he goes - I was like 'I do too!' Odd habit, I know, but I like it - I find peace there.

This is a graveyard by 'the big blue box' that I study at in Potsdam. Instead of waiting 15 minutes at the bus stop I like to take a little walk into the graveyard...

This is the graveyard chapel....




German graveyards are VERY well cared for (if the family doesn't pay their grave plot bill, the gravestone is removed and the burial plot made ready for somebody else - yeah, limited land = interesting ways of dealing with death...anyway...)

I spoke in my last post about Kristallnacht and the effects that it had on the Jews of Germany. Now I want to share some effects WWII had on the German people themselves, especially 'my' German refugees...


Here in the graveyard is a 'War-Time graveyard'. Several of these graves are unknown soldiers, many very young.

1) What a loss and what a waste! That is sad enough that people lose their lives, but young men in the 'prime of life'.... ?







2) This in particular I find sorrowful. This row includes a family of father-mother-and 3 children (the oldest 7 and the youngest 3)! A whole family dead and buried here amongst the war dead. (From my interviews I can only imagine several possible ways they died...)

My point in showing this and this is what I am hoping people learn from my research: war hurts everyone! In the US growing up 'Germans = Nazis' and as Germans 'all were guilty', but the more I learn of the effects of WWII on Germans, etc. I have to ask 'what is the 7-year old girl buried with her parents 'guilty' of?'

The point of points is that hopefully you will go back in my blog and look at my 'Soviet War Memorial' post - 'add' it to the 'Kristallnacht' post - and then 'add' it to this post (German civilian dead and German dead in general) and for us all to come to the same conclusion:

WAR IS STUPIDITY with WEAPONS and HATE and brings us NOTHING!!

So on this Volkstrauertag, after talking with so many German refugees about their mothers/aunts/sisters being raped and killed by Soviet soldiers; realizing that those same Soviet soldiers' families were probably killed or starved by Nazis troops; and then seeing the graves of children; hearing about the hundreds of thousands killed by bombing raids in Britain and Germany, I would like to suggest....

'WAR! What is it good for? Absolutely NOTHING!' ....

WAR = EVIL
WAR = STUPIDITY
WAR = WASTE
WAR = HATE
WAR = DESTRUCTION

and something I don't want and that I want to stop!

Kristallnacht

Today Germany, and hopefully the world, remembers 'Kristallnacht'. 70 years ago (that freaks me out just realizing how historically 'recent' that is) Nazi-inspired riots occurred throughout Germany. In one night over 90 Jewish people were killed, untold numbers beaten and over 1,000 synagogues burned (often when I visit a town in Germany there will be a 'bare' piece of land or a plaque on a building saying 'here used to stand the Jewish synagogue, but was burned down on 9 November 1938')! During this Kristallnacht 30,000 Jewish men and boys were 'detained' and afterwards sent to concentration camps. For many people this is where the Holocaust 'began'...

I took these photos back in the summer and felt that now was appropriate to share them.


This is what I usually see of Grunewald (Green Wood/Green Forest) train station on my way to Potsdam to study. Nothing crazy/out of the ordinary.

Once, however, when I was walking through Berlin in an area that used to be a 'Jewish Quarter' of sorts, I read that many of Berlin's Jews were transported from Grunewald train station to concentration camps. I had heard that there was somekind of memorial, but had never seen it. One day I decided to get off the train and go see what was there....


Apparently the train station used to be MUCH bigger and had a lot more rail platforms - a few are now blocked off...


















I followed a sign that said 'Platform 17' - it is a memorial and this is what it looks like.

All of those 'rusty' iron pieces on the ground is one transport that left Grunewald from 1941 to 1945 taking another part of Berlin's Jewish population to the concentration camps. In total over 50,000 of Berlin's Jews were sent from this train station.

I must say it is 'freaky' how 'systematic' it seemed to funtion...there were times (maybe 1943-44) when each day in a week over 1,000 Jews were sent to Theresienstadt/Auschwitz or other concentration camps.


Here are some of the rails, grown over by trees, etc....


















Here is a little plaque of remembrance. Whenever I visit Jewish graveyards in Europe there are always rocks on top of the gravemarkers. I don't know if that is the Jewish way of remembering the dead or paying their respects, but it's clearly being done here...








This is a modern artistic part of the memorial - they are....as if a body had been in there, but then was taken out and the imprint is left....the significance now is just hitting me....











People left flowers on specific transport dates - we can guess as to why.....

One bouquet was on a transport with over 1,000 Jews sent to Auschwitz.

This is another...how to describe it? ....'psycho'/insane element to the whole thing...the Nazis were literally trying to exterminate the Jews until the VERY END...this is a transport on 27 March 1945! 18 Jews were sent to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt in today's Czech Republic. ....The Soviet Army was literally at Berlin's 'door step' just prior to this and the SS, etc. were still trying to kill as many Jews as they could!

I specifically want to end with this picture. This is the entrance to the Grunewald Train Station. Cute, eh? And this is the point....maybe because I see how 'frail' and 'faulty' we as human beings are and how fast things can change, but I just always see everything that we have as very 'shaky', i.e. we just assume that we'll always live in democracies; we just assume that our neighbors won't try to kill us; we assume that something like the Holocaust would never happen again; and yet the truth is, ethnic cleaning, etc. continue to occur as you're reading this! The Jews of Berlin...just 20 years before Hitler came to power lived, worked and lived as families in Berlin. They served in the government; they were soldiers in WWI - and then suddenly everything changed!

Anyway, I am not here to judge - I have no idea if, when confronted with 20 Nazi young men beating a Jewish woman in public, what I would have done, HOWEVER I do know and can see THE GUILT that follows the people who did nothing! That for me....would be worse than dying and I hope that when confronted with such situations in the future, I don't turn 'a blind eye'.

I hope that we all remember 'Kristallnacht', not just because of what it initiated in the past, but also as a method of avoiding such things in the future.

I also hope that all of those families, fathers, mothers and children who felt the fear of not knowing where they were going/or KNOWING where they were going, have the peace that they deserve....

In Memory of my Grandmama....

This is dedicated to someone I love. Her name is Marie and she is my 'Grandmama'. She passed away this last week...in my opinion it came on all very 'suddenly'. I guess when Pres. Monson told us to 'live without regret' and that someday the opportunities to be together wouldn't be there, were all too true in our case.

I still remember the first time I met her. My Mom's mom's 'nickname' is 'Granny' and so we all decided that our 'new grandma' would be called 'Grandmama'. She always surprised me with how knowledgable and 'hip' she was. One day Suzanne was talking with Grandmama on the phone and Grandmama let out a 'who let the dogs out?! Wuff! Wuff!' (for the time it was very 'in' ;) I enjoyed talking to her about her life, childhood on the farm in Minnesota and her other memories. I was grateful to have been able to spend time with her over the last few Christmases....

This might be all muddled right now, but that's 'the moment'....

I love her and I am glad I was able to get to know her and to love her.

I am glad she doesn't have to suffer anymore and I am glad that she can go back to her/my/our 'real' home...

I also dedicate this blog to all of you out there who 'adopt' sons/daughters/grandparents/friends/etc. in your own way. My Grandmama didn't have to love me, but she chose to and that means a lot to me today to know this....So just know that those of you who 'adopt' 'strays' throughout your lives that you are loved and appreciated and that you're making a world of a difference through your loving acts of kindness...

Hope to see you soon, Grandmama! Love you forever....