FARM AND FOOD FILE
By default, obituary
writers get the last
official word on
everyone. They tell the deceased
person’s story
through births, marriages,
and deaths; add to it with
names of parents, siblings,
and children; and round it
out with an anecdote or two
about hobbies and professional
achievements.
Maybe that’s why my father
had a hand in writing
his own obit; he wanted to
tell his own story. I learned
this fact only after his July
2016 death. I could have
guessed it, though, because
the spare, no fanfare obituary
was as spare and no fanfare
as he.
My mother, however,
didn’t write hers. I did that
solemn duty the morning after
her death, brought on by
a fall, on April 22. Mom’s
obituary is nearly as spare as
Dad’s with only two, small
flourishes. Mom was a euchre-
playing shark and she
could sew anything from
dishtowels to her pastorbrother’s
albs. She wasn’t
just a seamstress; she was an
artist.
But the official obituary
of Twila Ruth Guebert, 86,
of Red Bud, IL, doesn’t
touch on her fuller, more
challenging life: her birth
into poverty on a Dust Bowl
Nebraska farm; the unfathomable
hard work she and
her family
later
endured
on a
wornout,
southern
Illinois
hill farm
just to
eat;
childhood
rheumatic
fever; how
she was so smart she
skipped fourth grade; or
why she never told her stern
parents about her dreams to
be a nurse.
Her wedding came only
three months after her high
school graduation when she
married my father, five
years her senior. At 19 she
was a mother, again at 20,
and then again at 21. I was
born two months after she
turned 23; Perry when she
was 25. There was a sixth
child eight, merciful years
later.
How did a 25-year-old
with five children under age
seven on a 720-acre, 100-
cow dairy farm at the end of
the road manage it all?
Like many farm women
of that era I suspect, she often
didn’t. Oh, her sewing
machine ran past midnight
and she beat the sun to the
kitchen most mornings, but
it wasn’t enough. There was
always canning, noon “dinner,”
laundry, diapers, inlaws,
and countless other
mother and wifely duties
waiting.
That’s where we came in.
When my brothers, sister,
and I got old enough to
climb a ladder to wash windows,
hold a hoe to weed, or
use a paring knife to peel
potatoes, we were put on the
assembly line to boost production.
It usually ran from
7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day
we weren’t in school or in
the dairy barn with Dad and
Howard.
And it wasn’t just tough;
oftentimes it was too tough.
We came to dread the
work because while it yielded
delicious food, a clean
house, and a sense of German
Lutheran pride, not one
of those Ball jars held one
laugh and no shiny window
or polished floor sparkled
with one smile or one joke.
In short, none of it-not
our work, output, or success-
made my mother happy.
I wonder how many farm
women of that era experienced
similar trials, similar
unhappiness, and similar
darkness? No one ever
talked about it then and few
even talk about it now.
Why? The silence almost
killed her.
Despite the many unspoken
reasons for my mother’s
unhappiness during those
backbreaking, kids-everywhere
years, the darkness
seemed to lessen when
grandchildren and financial
stability arrived. First came
grandsons, then, a gaggle of
granddaughters and greatgranddaughters.
With them she became
the mother who, maybe, she
always dreamed she would
be. Patiently teaching them
how to make peach pie and
sew doll clothes, encouraging
them to raid Dad’s candy
jar when he was snoozing
by the TV, showing
them where gallons of ice
cream lay waiting for them
to make into chocolate
malts.
All the while laughing
and smiling, something her
children never saw or heard.
Throughout that welcome
change, however, she kept
her skeptical, tough eye on
life. Her hard beginnings
and decades of hard work
seemed to have perpetually
wrapped her in a hard shell
that never allowed her a
restful, soulful peace.
I humbly pray, Dear
Lord, may she finally have
that eternal rest. Surely she
earned it.
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