“The RoseBouquet”

Myrna was born just two weeks before I was, and we were second cousins. When she was six months old, her mother Teresa died suddenly. Her father Isaac married Teresa’s younger, 16 year old sister, Cornelia, or Nellie. But Nellie didn’t think she could handle the baby and the five older siblings, so they gave Myrna to my Aunt Mary and Uncle Henry Wiebe, who had no children. Now she was my first cousin.

I think Myrna and I first met when we were about two, and they came all the way from British Columbia (B.C.) on the west coast of Canada, to visit us in the village of Chortitz on the flat prairies of Saskatchewan, about the time we were age three.

Both of us have a copy of a small black and white photo where the two of us are standing side by side in front of Grandma’s carragana hedge. We look a lot alike. So much so, that when I was a school girl already, I would take our family album to Mom, and say, “Which one is me, again?”

Eventually I remembered Mom’s answer, “Myrna lives in B.C. where it is warmer, so she’s wearing the white socks. You live in Saskatchewan, so you have the white stockings on.”

Myrna and Aunt Mary came for some other visits, and I recall one when we were about 13. Myrna showed me the first jersey knit dress I’d ever seen. It was a blue print shift in a plastic pocket about the size of a book. When she pulled it out and held it up, voila, no wrinkles! She gave it to me.

She also gave me a white, very slimming sleeveless dress with a jacket, both of which were trimmed with a blue and white stripped band of about an inch or more. Very sophisticated-looking to my eye! Before she left, she gave that to me too, and I mourned when I could no longer wear that as my Sunday-best outfit.

After that we became teen pen pals. I still recall two things from that correspondence. Once Myrna wrote and asked if I’d like her to send me a slug. Naively I replied, “sure.” In her next letter she said, she couldn’t. Slugs were bugs in the garden and very slimy! Another time she wrote that she had spent the summer picking berries for commercial berry farms, and had earned several hundred dollars, which she was going to spend on school clothes. I admit to a pang of envy.

After high school, I got a job in Saskatoon as a telephone operator, and Myrna got a job working in a bank in Calgary. The next year, two of my school friends, who attended Bible College, got summer jobs working in a sanatorium in Calgary, and offered to pay my gas if I would drive them out there with my new Nova. My brother Ernie had run away from home, but we’d heard he was working at an Esso service station between Calgary and Canmore (which is this side of Banff). I took my sister Elsie along for company, and we delivered my friends to their job and then we went looking for Ernie. Long story short, he offered to show us around the next day. We asked if we could pick up Myrna and bring her too. He agreed.

So the next day Ernie took us up Mt Norquay on a ski lift, which was empty as it was post-ski season, and up to a tarn - which Ernie said was a bottomless mountain lake. He rented a motor boat and took Myrna, Elsie and me for a boat ride.

What I remember most about that ride is that motor died, and we girls were rather nervous about falling in and never hitting any bottom. But Ernie rowed us safely back to the marina.

Some time after that Myrna got a job transfer to a bank at Gander Bay, Newfoundland.

(Taken when I brought Myrna back to the airport after her visit just before she moved to Gander Bay, NF.)

It happened there was an American Forces base there, and she married a black American. They were stationed in Germany at the time Aunt Mary died, so Myrna was not able to come for her funeral.

They were stationed in New Mexico, and I had their phone number, so when Canada Post was on a strike and I couldn’t send a birthday card, I decided to phone Myrna for her birthday. George answered the phone and I heard him for the first time. I was nearly in fits of giggles over his rounded vowels and strong southern accent by the time he’d called Myrna to the phone.

They had two children by that time, Tony and Lenora, and I still treasure the photos of them that Myrna sent me.

When George left the forces he seemed to have trouble getting work and drank, and so they moved to Georgia to be nearer his family for support. They had two more girls there, Maria, and Sephia. Lenora was already a teen, and had become my pen pal (sort of in Myrna’s place as she was so busy).

Myrna was never one to complain, but after Tony and Lenora were on their own, she reached a place of “enough” and moved back to B.C. with the younger two girls. She hoped to find some support from her own natural siblings. They seemed to all have busy lives of their own, so she had to start over, re-training and taking jobs whenever she could.

My Mom died in 1997, so the next summer Dad and I treated ourselves to a trip to B.C. and visited as many relatives as we could. We managed to visit Myrna and her new husband, Fern DesHaies. They had a business they ran from home, duplicating tapes of speakers at seminars and conventions for immediate sale. Myrna did the work at a bank of machines in their living room, while Fern, the gregarious salesman went out to drum up business.

Something went wrong there too. Myrna has never been one to say a negative word about anyone, but after she was diagnosed with a cancer of the cervix, and they had tried various alternative therapies, she had a growth removed… and suddenly I learned that Maria had gone over the US border to live with Lenora and her husband to babysit for them, and Myrna and Sephia were all on their own. Then one day, Myrna confided that she had a new growth and was not able to sit, and no, there was no point in a surgery again.

Last year, at about Easter, Myrna notified me that Sephia was coming to Saskatchewan to a weekend of chorale workshops with her school choir. There was to be a public concert of all the choirs in Hepburn at the Bethany auditorium; would I like to meet Sephia there?

Of course! Dad and I went and I was able to pick Sephia out of her choir, and later I got to spend about half an hour visiting with her. My biggest impression was that she had Myrna’s sweet, gracious, caring spirit, thinking more of others than herself. It was almost like meeting Myrna in person. So I phoned her that evening and told her what a wonderful daughter she had there! Sephia confided that she hoped for a career in music, but she wanted to be there for her Mom first.

This July 16 I tried to phone Myrna to wish her a happy birthday. No answer. Well, I decided, maybe they went out for a walk. I tried again a few days later. No answer.

Then I got an email from Mom’s cousin Margaret Hartman, who is married to a minister. Although retired they do a lot of visiting of the sick and shutins. Margaret said that Myrna was in Hospice Care at the Langely hospital, and she gave me a phone number to call, assuring me that they would give Myrna the phone, and she would be glad to hear from me.

I tried and didn’t get through the first time, but two other times got through and was able to speak to Myrna, who sounded so weak and faint, that I knew the end was surely coming faster now.

I notified my sister Elsie and my niece there in B.C. and though Elsie doesn’t live and work in Langely, she gets to that area about once a week, so she made a point of stopping in to see Myrna several times. Last Wednesday evening, she was there while Myrna’s sister-in-law Marilyn was there, and together they sang for Myrna. Sephia was spending her nights there in the room with her Mom, and that night at 2:30 a.m. Myrna was able to slip off to her eternal home in Heaven.

I’m sure the Welcome Celebration is in full-swing up there! The memorial service in Aldersgrove this morning will be but a a small taste. I would like to be there, but I know I’ll be hearing about it from various ones soon.

Meantime, I’m praying that people will rally around the children, especially Sephia, and see that she gets her career in music.

P.S. I have received a bulletin from Myrna’s funeral, and it has a nice photo of her that must be fairly recent. I want to include it here for an update.  I believe she is holding her granddaughter, Antany.