Friday, November 17, 2017
I offer my sympathy to Helen's children and grandchildren. It must be a hard and stress filled to go through the deaths of both parents within a month.
I tend to think of Kristen's family as my Inlaws-At-One-Remove. We've socialized together, and they are (or had been) important to our mutual relatives (Don, Kristen and their daughters) who are naturally important to me. I remember a time at Sick Kids when we worried and prayed together in the foyer for the healing of one of the girls we could not be with "upstairs". Such moments join people together and the memories of such times last long. I also remember Helen making various ketchups. I had not thought anyone still made such a staple of my own diet at home. Maybe the Schneiders or Catherine Parr Traill back in the pioneer days, but now? All the spices that go into the procedure. I got such a kick out that. Not even my Tante Mary, who canned and bottled so many foods, made her own ketchup. [Or if she had done, she gave it up when I was too young to notice.]
And Helen's educational work was well known, not only in her "Conference" of Mennonites but in my "Conference" (the General Conference of Mennonites in Canada) and the Mennonite Brethren Conference. [I went to school and Vacation Bible School with kids from all three in Vineland, and so our mothers at least heard or knew or knew about the leading women speakers from all three.]
